


Informed Consent

by CaseyM



Series: Raven Encounters [4]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/F explicit, M/M kissing, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, canon-level violence, sometimes you just want to scratch an itch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 03:53:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3963412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaseyM/pseuds/CaseyM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joss Carter doesn’t even like Anthony Marconi. It doesn’t make any sense that she gets so turned on every time she’s near him. But there’s actually a perfectly rational explanation. Well, an explanation, anyhow. After they get some unexpected help to stop a serial killer, Fusco introduces Carter to Raven and Joss learns the truth about Marconi’s sexual irresistibility. And once she has all the facts, she can make her own decision about taking the smart-talking, sexy mobster to her bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Joss Carter tried not to be too obvious when she looked at her phone. Then she decided that was the wrong way to go. She held the phone in front of her and glared at it. Then she slapped it down on the bar, not hard enough to break it but plenty hard enough to make it loud.

She picked up her drink angrily, took a long drink, and thumped it down. Then she picked up her phone again. She glared over it at the mirror behind the bar, working her jaw as if she was thinking to herself.

In the reflection, she watched her target. He was ten feet behind her, sitting in booth all by himself. He glanced up at her, then looked at his watch.

It was eight minutes until his contact was due to arrive. Carter needed to stay where she was and look like she was waiting for her date for that long. That part was easy. Sitting at the bar alone long enough to record their meeting – that was going to be tricky.

Her phone buzzed and she snagged it. “Where are you?” she growled.

“Stuck on the bridge,” Fusco answered. He sounded as exasperated as she felt. “They got a jumper. Shut down all lanes while he makes up his mind.”

“Shit,” Carter growled.

“I know,” her partner answered. “I’d flash my badge, but I’m still a mile from the roadblock. I can turn around and try to get to the tunnel …”

She looked in the mirror at her target again. Mark Miller was a high-level assistant in the mayor’s office. They’d worked for three weeks to catch him meeting with the representative from the Albanian mob. They were pretty sure he was taking bribes to keep quiet about a murder he’d witnessed. But they needed to prove it to leverage his testimony. If he spotted Carter now, they were going to lose him for good.

“No,” she told him. “There’s no time. Go home. We’ll catch up tomorrow.”

“You should just back out, Carter. We’ll get him next time.”

“I know.”

“Carter.”

“I’ll finish my drink and go,” she promised.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Night.”

Carter clicked her phone off. She picked her drink up and swirled the ice cubes. Yeah, the smart move was to drink up and go. Get out before Miller made her. Call it a night. Catch the next meeting. Live to fight another day.

Three weeks they’d been stalking this guy, and she was going to have to let him go.

But just for tonight.

She drank deeply.

There was suddenly a hand on her shoulder, strong and masculine. “Hey, baby. Sorry I’m late.”

Carter turned, expecting Reese. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Anthony Marconi, Elias’ right-hand man. His dark eyes glittered with wry amusement as he crossed behind her and settled onto the next barstool. His scar crinkled when he smiled.

She matched his smile and leaned very close. “What are you doing here?”

His grin went wider. “My neighborhood,” he answered quietly. “What are _you_ doing here?” He looked into her eyes, and for no good reason Joss felt her heart flutter. “Let me guess. You’re waiting for Miller to pick up his pay-off for the week.”

The detective took a deep breath – and tried not to notice that Marconi’s eyes flicked down to the front of her blouse. “What, you got eyes on the mayor’s office now?”

“No, but we damn sure have eyes on the Albanians.”

“I don’t need any more trouble, Marconi. If you blow this for me …”

He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Just here to help, Detective,” he murmured in her ear.

It wasn’t just his eyes that were getting to her, Joss thought. It was his voice, too. And the way his arm curled lightly around her side now. She wanted to lean in too. To get closer. He smelled good.

For a thug and a killer, anyhow, he smelled pretty good.

Marconi’s lip curled again, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Then he turned and gestured for a drink of his own. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

He sat between her and Miller, so it was easy for Joss to glance over her shoulder at her target and while she looked like she was looking at her date. He knew that, of course. “This is good,” Joss said grudgingly. Miller glanced her way, and she raised her hand to touch the side of Anthony’s face, let her thumb trail very lightly over the line of his scar. “But I don’t know why you’re helping me.”

“You helped Carl once,” he reminded her.

He turned his head and brushed his lips over the center of her palm. It felt like a tickle of electricity. Joss felt her cheeks grow warm and she grasped for some hardness in her tone. “Doesn’t mean I won’t throw him and you both in jail if I get the chance.”

_Something wrong there_ , Carter thought. _Something I just missed._

Anthony smiled, undisturbed. “Fair enough.” He sipped his drink. “How’s business?”

“Dead,” she answered immediately. They both chuckled.

Over his shoulder, she saw Miller take out his phone and check a text. Then he reached for his wallet. “Damn. He’s leaving.”

“Slap me,” Marconi said.

“What?”

“Slap me and storm out.”

Carter got it. If she stomped out of the bar first, Miller wouldn’t know that she was following him. “Sorry about this,” she murmured.

She slapped him.

“Hey!” Marconi protested.

“Don’t act like I don’t know why you’re late!” Carter snarled. “I can smell that bitch all over you.” She turned sharply and stormed out of the bar.

A black SUV idled in the no-parking zone directly in front of the bar. A very thin, lanky man in a turtleneck leaned against the passenger door. He looked Carter up and down. She turned away from him and made a show of scrambling in her purse for her cell phone.

The bar door opened again and Miller came out. He looked around, then crossed to the skinny man.

Anthony Marconi was right behind him. He walked over to Joss, effectively blocking her view of the men – and theirs of her. “C’mon, baby,” he said warmly, calmly. “Don’t be that way.”

Carter held her phone down to her side and clicked the record button. “Be what way?” she challenged. “Honest? We both know where you been.”

Both men looked toward the couple. Good, Carter thought. That’ll made a nice still shot of the two of them.

“Now, baby.” Marconi put his hand on her waist and backed her gently toward the wall of the next building. “C’mon.”

“Get off me,” Carter protested, with no heat.

He bent his head and nuzzled the side of her neck.

Carter damn near dropped her phone.

Anthony’s breath smoothed over her skin, and Joss felt her arm and chest erupt in goosepimples. It didn’t tickle, not exactly. It was just warm and enticing and she wanted more of it, everywhere, in the bend of her elbow and the valley of her breasts and …

It was all play-acting, she reminded herself firmly. Just Marconi blocking her with his body so the criminals didn’t notice her cell phone down at her side recording their exchange. They didn’t even try to be subtle about it. The thin man took a fat envelope out of his pocket and handed it over.

She tightened her grip on her phone even as she rolled her head back to give him more access to her bare skin.

Anthony planted a lingering kiss in the hollow of her collarbone. His lips were firm, but they moved slightly, like a dance, like the strongest butterfly that had ever lived. With lips like that, his tongue would be …

Miller opened the top of the envelope and riffed through the bills. Right there in the open, on the sidewalk. Joss wanted to shake her head in disgust at the man’s rank amateurism – but she didn’t want to dislodge Marconi’s lips.

Which was insane. He was a thug, almost certainly a killer, and just because he was good with his lips didn’t mean she was …

She focused on being sure her camera was still pointed the right direction.

Miller pocketed his hush money and moved away down the block. The thin man walked around the front of his SUV and got in.

Carter clicked off the record button on her phone. “Okay,” she whispered to Marconi.

His teeth nipped very gently at her throat. “Okay what?” he murmured.

The murmur went straight to Carter’s core, and she felt herself growing wet.

Which was absolutely fucking ridiculous.

She pushed him away with her free hand. “Okay, they’re gone.” The SUV pulled away from the curb. “I got what I needed.”

Marconi leaned back, but kept his arms lightly around her waist. He looked smug, as if he knew exactly what all his nuzzling had done to her. “Are you sure?” he purred.

The man was more insufferably arrogant than John Reese, Carter thought. She wouldn’t have thought that was possible. “Yeah. I’m sure. Now let go.”

He released her and took a step back, but he was still too close.

Carter put her phone back in her purse, and made herself not straighten up her dress. “Thanks for your help.”

The smug amusement didn’t fade. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“I’m a homicide detective, Marconi. I think I can handle myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” he answered smoothly. But he walked beside her anyhow.

Carter tried to compose her thoughts. She was pretty sure she was doing okay outwardly, not giving away how stupidly turned on she was by this man she had every reason to hate, but in her mind there was all kinds of crazy going on. She needed to focus on the case. They had the video they needed. Tomorrow she and Fusco would go have a long talk with Miller, and let him see the little show he’d put on tonight. Then they could move on the Armenian. Probably need to get Miller into witness protection. Maybe needed to give the mayor a heads-up before they moved …

She stumbled on a piece of uneven pavement and Marconi grabbed her elbow to steady her.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “I don’t usually wear heels like this to work.”

“Or dresses,” he observed. “Which is too bad, really. You have gorgeous legs.”

Carter felt her cheeks go hot again – and other parts of her anatomy. Anthony still held her elbow they walked, and she could feel the tingle of electricity in their contact again. There was only one thing to say to such a brazen compliment, and she said it. “Thank you.”

They got to her car. Carter unlocked the door. When she turned around, Marconi was holding out a business card. “You need anything in this neighborhood again, give me a call.”

She wasn’t sure if that was an invitation or a warning. She took the card.

“Or in any other neighborhood,” he added. The wry smile tugged at his mouth again. “I get the feeling you’d be worth commuting for.”

“Oh, I am,” Carter assured him. She was relieved that she’d found her sass suddenly. “No that you’ll ever know.”

“No. Probably not.” He seemed genuinely saddened.

“You saved my ass back there,” Joss said. “I won’t keep you out of jail, but … if you need anything short of that, you know, bus fare or something , you let me know.”

Marconi nodded. “Good night, Detective.”

He was about to take a step back, and Carter moved before she could think. She put one hand behind his head and pulled him down for a real kiss.

It was okay, she decided, and it wasn’t giving anything up as long as it was _her_ idea and not his.

She was a little gratified to feel the surprise in his body. The man went rigid for a second. Then he leaned onto the kiss. His hands settled on her waist again. He didn’t hold her tightly, didn’t grab. He didn’t need to. Because his lips …

His lips on her neck had been good. His lips on her lips, however, was amazing. He wasn’t rough, didn’t push. Just gentle and solid and moving. The world’s strongest butterfly again. Not quite teasing, but very enticing, and she parted her lips and leg his tongue slip between her teeth, and his tongue was even better. This man knew how to kiss, easy and confident and strong without being overbearing, and Joss felt it again right down to her core, felt her sex heat up and her knees go weak and suddenly she wanted this kiss to be just the beginning of something that lasted all night and well into tomorrow morning.

She might have groaned against his mouth.

Marconi lifted his head. “Whoa,” he breathed.

Even in the dim street light, Carter could see that his cheeks were flushed. His scar stood out a little darker. His lips remained parted; he panted lightly.

Her own lips tingled from the contact. She wanted more. And evidently she could have it. But she wasn’t going to. “Good night, Anthony,” she purred.

She knew he watched her legs as she climbed into the car. That gave her a different kind of warm. It was one thing to know a man turned her on. Another to know that she returned the favor.

Not that she was going to do anything about it, but at her age, it was nice to know she still could if she wanted to.

Carter licked her lips and grinned as she drove off.

It had been a hell of a good night.

 ***

Carl Elias sat in his comfortable chair just to the side of his front window, with a book in his hand and a glass of wine at his elbow. It was his second-favorite way to wind down after a busy day.

He heard the back door open. Before he could reach for his gun, Marconi called, “It’s me, Boss.”

Elias relaxed. “In here. There’s wine open in the kitchen, if you like.”

“’kay.” He listened as the man moved to the kitchen. The refrigerator opened and closed, and then there was the distinct sound of a bottle top being popped. Anthony came to the doorway with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Hey, Boss.”

“Anthony. You’re late. Everything go okay?”

Marconi sat down in the chair across from him. As always, he sat at the very edge of the seat, leaning forward and ready to jump up in an instant. “New development. Thought I better run it by you before I went ahead.”

“Are you hurt?” It was always his first question, when Anthony had been out of his sight. There were no visible marks on the man, but he was good at concealing when he was in pain.

“No.” He wiped his mouth absently, and then his cheek. “Well, I got slapped, but I told her to do that.”

Elias put his book down and picked up his wine. “You met an obliging lady, then?” He smiled encouragingly. They had established from day one that their relationship would be an open one. Given that their first sexual encounter had taken place with a woman between them, it would have been foolish to ignore the heterosexual urges that they both still harbored.

“Not exactly.” Marconi took a swig of his beer. “I went to that bar where we heard Miller was meeting the Armenian. Detective Carter was there.”

“Really?” This was surprising news to Elias. “Not _with_ Miller, surely.”

“Staking him out,” Anthony assured him. “They know he saw the murder, and that he’s taking pay-offs to keep his mouth shut. She was waiting to get the two of them on video together.”

Elias nodded. He would have been deeply disappointed to learn that Joss Carter was in bed with someone as corrupt as he knew Miller to be. “Was she successful?”

“She was. But I had to help her a little.”

“And helping her involved asking her to slap you.”

“So she could storm out ahead of Miller.”

“I see.” Elias smiled. “And then I imagine you had to kiss and make up.”

Marconi nodded, with a sly grin.

Carl put his glass down and leaned forward in his own chair. “And how was that, kissing Detective Carter?”

“Exactly like you’d expect,” his lieutenant answered warmly.

Elias grabbed him behind the neck with both hands and pulled him into an urgent kiss. Anthony surrendered to it and then kissed him back fiercely. The lingering taste of Joss Carter on his lover’s tongue was probably only in his imagination; it was faint under the taste of beer and Scotch. But the memory was there, certainly. And Anthony’s willingness, eagerness to share it was unmistakable.

Carl stood up slowly and Anthony moved with him, so the kiss remained uninterrupted. He put his free hand on his lover’s back, grasped a handful of the familiar black leather. Their bodies pressed together. Through his khakis and Marconi’s jeans, he could feel the man’s cock go hard even as his own did. The memory of Joss Carter faded from the kiss. It was just them now. Just his sweet Anthony, strong and powerful and so skilled, so giving. It took his breath away every time, that a man as hard as Scarface could be so willfully tender as a lover. Trusting his body to the hands to which he’d so often trusted his life was the height of joy for Elias.

Their lips parted. They stood still for a moment, holding each other tightly, feeling the heat grow in the motionless friction between them. “So I thought,” Anthony said breathlessly against his neck, “maybe we see if the NYPD can jack up Miller and put the Armenian away for us. Lot less messy that way.”

“Oh, yes,” Elias purred in return. “There’s no point in frustrating Detective Carter’s investigation if it’s progressing.”

“And if it stalls, I can always take him out later.”

“Of course.” Elias turned his head and claimed his partner’s lips again. “I agree completely.”

Marconi grinned against his mouth. “You want to finish that wine, Boss?”

Carl chuckled back. “Maybe later.”

They went to bed.

 ***

Joss Carter stood under the hot shower spray with her eyes closed. She was very tired, but also very pleased. They had Miller cold. She’d talked to Fusco and sent him the video, in case her phone got run over by a bus before she got to work the next day. She’d also downloaded it to her home computer. Working with Reese and Finch had made her paranoid about back-ups.

Tomorrow was going to be a hell of a good day. She couldn’t wait to see the look on the mayor’s face.

She brought her hand up and touched her lips. She knew it was her imagination, but she could still feel the tingle of Anthony’s mouth on hers. Damn, but that man knew how to kiss.

“Stop it,” Carter said out loud, but quietly. She turned her face up toward the shower spray and opened her mouth, then swished the hot water around to rinse away the taste of him. She turned again and spit it out. Anthony Marconi was a career criminal. He’d kidnapped Taylor. She wasn’t interested in him. In anything about him.

She didn’t care if she never saw him again.

And that smart-ass smile of his, the way his eyes crinkled up when he was teasing, the way his sassy mouth made her want to slap him sideways …

Joss became aware that she was breathing hard.

Fine. There was nothing about the man’s personality that she wanted anything to do with. But she could admit to herself that he was still a hell of a kisser.

And the way he’d held her. She knew he was crazy strong. His touch was firm, certain. But not rough. He knew he was strong; he didn’t have to prove it. _Controlled_ , she thought. _That was the word. Controlled._

Her hand traced down across her breast. She stopped with her palm over her own nipple. Felt it grow hard without any further friction.

Marconi would be like that as a lover, she thought. Controlled. Patient. Teasing.

Plus, she knew from being pressed against him, the man was packing some serious heat.

Of course she didn’t want him. But here, alone in her shower, she could let herself imagine …

She slid her hand down to the flat of her belly. Yes, he would be like that. Slow. Setting his own pace. She knew it would be slower than she wanted – and that that would be perfect.

She finally allowed her hand to move lower still. She dragged one finger over her clit, just once. She was already slick, wet. He would go slow like this. One stroke, and then make her wait. Her belly quivered. She stroked again, just once.

Joss brought her other hand up to her breast. She took her nipple gently between her thumb and forefinger and just held it. Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath. She wanted more. Harder. Faster. But Anthony would make her wait. Let her simmer. Let the heat build up.

She moved her feet apart, rested her butt against the wall of the shower. He could be on his knees at her feet. His hands would be on her thighs. Those strong fingers, just a little too tight. His thumbs leaving soft indents on her flesh. He wouldn’t hurt her, but he would hold her tight enough that she knew he was in charge. In control.

He would lean in, let his breath blow lightly across her clit. He would nuzzle at her upper thighs just as he’d nuzzled her neck, restless and skilled, teasing and never getting quite close enough. He would force her legs a little further apart and he would look up at her, his eyes twinkling and his scar crinkling up as he laughed, because she would be squirming and moaning with desire by then, urging him to …

“Damn it!” Carter said. She straightened up, yanked her hands away from her body. Then she twirled the shower knob until the water turned ice-cold. It was harsh and she gasped at the shock of it, but it was what she needed. What she deserved.

She rinsed off, turned off the water, and climbed out.

Joss toweled her body off roughly. She was not, _was not_ , going to start masturbating to thoughts of Anthony Marconi. The whole idea was absurd. She would rather go to bed frustrated.    

She did. And she did not sleep for a very long time.

 ***

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Who is he?” Carter asked, looking at the body.

Fusco consulted his notes. “Cody Atkins. Thirty-five. No record. Lived here four years. Neighbor across the hall said he had a lot of company, usually of the female variety, but never any big parties, no loud arguments, nothing like that.”

Joss sniffed. The apartment smelled mostly like dead body, but also a little bit like sex. “Gonna guess he had company last night.”

“You think she killed him?”

Carter moved around to the other side of the bed. Atkins was naked on his back in the middle of the queen-sized bed. His arms were spread out to his sides. Maybe crucifiction-style, but more likely that was just where they’d fallen when he stopped trying to fight off whoever had strangled him.

The slender rope was still wrapped tightly around his neck. It was yellow nylon, about the thickness of her little finger. The ends were cut cleanly and wrapped with black tape to prevent fraying. It was wrapped around the front and crossed in the back. From the color of his tongue, which protruded from his mouth, Carter was pretty sure it was the cause of death.

Cody Atkins had a nice body. Fit. But his face was swollen and purple. It was impossible to tell if he’d been handsome.

Not that it mattered, really.

“Make sure the ME checks under his nails,” she said to the coroner’s tech.

“And get these condoms bagged up,” Fusco added, gesturing to the bedside wastepaper basket.

“Condoms, plural?” Joss asked.

“I see three.”

“Maybe different girls on different nights, and this one got mad about it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe one girl, one night and she killed him because he wasn’t up for the fourth round?” Fusco shrugged. “If that’s a thing, most of the men in this city will end up dead.”

Carter looked around the bedroom. It was typically tiny; the bed barely fit, leaving less than three feet on the sides, and the dresser was wedged in the closet. No sign that the drawers had been gone through.

She used her pen to open the drawer in the bedside stand. There were three more strips of new condoms, a bottle of lube, and a blindfold. There was also a cellphone.

“Phone,” she said. Fusco already had gloves on; he came and picked it up.

“Last call was at five-twenty last night,” he reported. “From Braun Events. That’s where he worked. Some kind of lighting technician. Trade shows and parties and stuff.”

“If whoever killed him was someone he met at work …”

“We could be looking at hundreds of suspects,” he sighed. “Let’s hope the canvas turns up something.”

“I suppose security cameras would be too much to ask for.”

“Gotta be some in the lobby, at least,” her partner countered.

“I’ll go ask.”

 ***

While they waited for the evidence to come in, Carter and Fusco went and shook down Mark Miller. He protested that he didn’t know anything about a murder, or about the Armenian mob. They showed him the video.

He demanded to see his lawyer. So they cuffed him and took him in.

He made his one phone call to his wife.

The wife promptly rolled over and told the Armenian in bed beside her to run.

“We’ll find him,” Carter said grimly, when she found out.

“Who’d have thought,” Fusco answered, “that a killer would also cheat with a married woman.”

“Can’t trust anybody these days.”

“No honor among thieves,” he said. “It’s a damn shame.”

 ***

Anthony Marconi stood against the wall, his black jacket and jeans blending into the shadows. He was motionless and calm. Relaxed. Patient.

Finally, a light came on in the second floor window.

The Armenian was home.

Marconi grinned to himself. He reached behind his back to check his weapon, then straightened and took four steps to the mouth of the alley.

“I know you’re not about to go do something stupid, Marconi,” Joss Carter said clearly from a different shadow.

Marconi stopped. He lowered his hands to his sides, splayed his fingers. Then he turned. “Detective?”

She took a single step into the light, jerked her head, and retreated. Anthony stepped into the deep shadow beside her.

“We’ve got him,” Carter said quietly. “And you don’t want to be up there when we kick the door.”

“Miller won’t testify,” Marconi said.

“If he won’t, his wife will.”

There was banging from inside the lighted window, shouting, then a bright flash of light. When it faded there was more shouting, and then it went quiet.

Carter’s radio crackled. “We got him.”

“Good job, guys,” she answered

“Nothing to it.”

Joss switched the radio off and turned to look at him. “Satisfied?”

Marconi nodded. If she hadn’t stopped him, he’d have been right in the middle of that raid – or standing over a freshly-dead body when the door opened. Either way, Elias would not have been happy. “Thanks, Detective.”

“Figure I owed you one.”

He looked her up and down. Even in her bland work pantsuit, she was a fine-looking woman. A _good_ woman, too. He gave her a little grin. “Nice to see you again.”

“You should get out of here,” she said. But there wasn’t any heat in her words.

“Guess so.” Beyond the building, on the street in front, he could see blue flashing lights. They were hauling the Armenian out. “If anything goes wrong …”

“We got this,” Carter assured him.

He turned to walk away.

“You forget something, Marconi?”

Anthony looked back. “Detective?”

“When you saved _my_ ass,” she said, “I at least gave you a good-night kiss.”

She was teasing him, of course. And she was good at it. Marconi didn’t even think. He just moved, pushed the woman firmly against the wall, and crushed his mouth against hers.

He heard her gasp, but then her mouth was open and her tongue was in his mouth and she was kissing him back as fiercely as he was kissing her. He put his hands on her waist and she arched her back, pressing her firm breasts against him as their lips bruised each other.

It was crazy hot. Marconi felt his cock begin to stiffen. He shifted his feet just a little, to keep from pressing against her. The kiss was intoxicating. Inviting.

He wanted more. He wanted to take her back to his car, two impossible blocks away, and lay her down in the back seat and …

… no. He wanted to take her home, strip off that damn suit one piece at a time, spread her out on his bed and …

He lifted his mouth and stepped back. “Kiss like that,” he began, and then he had to stop and swallow and try to get his voice even, “makes a man not want to say good night ‘til the next morning.”

Carter gave him a crooked smile. “Does it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her chin came up. “Stay out of trouble, Anthony.” She turned and walked away.

There was a country song, Marconi thought, something about hating to see her leave but loving to watch her go. Damn if Joss Carter couldn’t swagger in a pantsuit every bit as well as she could in high heels and a sexy dress. He whistled under his breath.

Carter paused, looked over her shoulder, and laughed. Then she disappeared around the corner.

Anthony rubbed his lips ruefully and walked slowly back to his own car.

 ***

Brian Brant was sixty-three years old. He was dead on the floor of his office. He was naked. There was a slender rope around his neck, yellow with black tape on the ends. His tongue stuck out of his mouth, swollen and discolored.

“We got a damn serial killer,” Fusco breathed under his breath.

Carter nodded.

There were no used condoms in evidence this time. But the office definitely smelled like sex. There were fresh abrasions on the man’s knees and on his lower back. Carpet burn, Joss was sure. The lab would confirm, of course, but she didn’t have much doubt.

Johnson’s secretary was hysterical. “He was fine when I left,” she said. “He was just going to finish up some paperwork.”

“He was alone?” Fusco asked.

“Yes. I double-checked the door when I left. I know it was locked.”

“He wasn’t expecting anyone?”

The woman shook her head. “No. I make all his appointments. There was no one coming. There was no one …”

They talked to her a little more, but got nothing useful. Brant was a financial consultant who specialized in retirement planning. He lived alone. Didn’t have any enemies. Didn’t have a serious girlfriend that the secretary knew about, but he did seem to date a lot of different ladies. No unhappy clients. No one screaming in the office, making threats on the phone, nothing that suggested a crazed stalker. No change in recent behavior. He hadn’t mentioned any concerns. Didn’t have any money problems.

They’d gotten surveillance footage from the first crime scene, Atkins, and isolated a suspect, a blonde woman of medium height and build who kept her face turned away from the cameras. They’d also gotten DNA off the outsides of the condoms, all from the same female, one who was not in any database. The semen inside all three condoms belonged to the victim, and it was all from the same three-hour period. There were fingerprints on the tape at the ends of the rope, and more scattered around the tiny apartment. They didn’t yield a name.

Mr. Johnson’s office building also had surveillance cameras. They isolated the image of a brunette of medium height and build who kept her face turned away from the camera.

There was no sign of forced entry in either case. No phone calls or texts or credit card history that gave them any leads. No connection between the two men that they could find.

Just two men who had had sex and then been strangled to death, almost certainly by the same woman. Prints and DNA from the second crime scene would tell them for sure. But they wouldn’t tell them who the killer was.

“For what it’s worth,” Fusco said, much later, when they’d run into their last dead end of the day, “if we get one more body we can call in the FBI.”

“Yay,” Carter answered flatly.

“See you in the morning. Maybe the perp will come to me in a dream.”

“At this point that would qualify as a good lead.”

After he left, Joss sat for a long time, staring at her computer, trying to think of where else to look.

She was in no hurry to get home; her son was going to the midnight movies and then staying at a friend’s house. At least that’s what he’d said, and if she suspected that he was going to his girlfriend’s house – well, he was eighteen and sexually responsible, and that was all she could ask for. She had planned to grab a sandwich on the way home and turn in early. But now she was restless, agitated, and she knew she’d never get to sleep.

Two murders and nowhere to look for the murderer. It pissed her off.

Women committed murder. Not as often as men, but it happened. Women became serial killers. _Much_ less often then men, but it happened. Women stalked men, entrapped them, killed them. She understood that.

But to actually have sex with the man first – and in the case of Atkins, to have sex with him three times – that felt wrong to Carter. Not morally wrong, but this-piece-doesn’t-fit wrong.

They’d toyed with the idea of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong, but the ME in Atkins case said it was a straight-up one shot strangulation, with no evidence that he’d ever experimented with it before, and Brant looked like the same thing.

So their killer let the men screw her and then she strangled them while they were recovering. Carter nodded. Sure. A freshly-laid man dropped his guard. Might be a little weak. Might close his eyes and doze off. Neither man seemed to have put up a struggle until the last minute. Their perp didn’t look like a big woman, so she’d need that advantage.

Black widow, Joss thought. No, preying mantis. Mate and then bite his head off.

Mating, she mused. Maybe their perp was trying to get pregnant …

Cody Atkins had worn a condom, three times. Brian Brant hadn’t; Carter was willing to bet her next paycheck the man had had a vasectomy. So that motive was unlikely.

Maybe they hadn’t satisfied her, and the perp had choked them to death as punishment.

_She ought to try Anthony Marconi_ , Joss thought absently. _There was a man who probably got the job done every time …_

Carter shook her head impatiently. She was getting nowhere except distracted. She needed to go home.

And not sleep.

She stood up.

_Marconi and his nimble lips_ , she thought. _His tongue. His hands._

Joss grabbed the edge of her desk as her knees went weak.

She was mooning over the man like a damn schoolgirl. He wasn’t all that hot. Talented, sure. And forbidden, which added heat to the equation. And pretty obviously interested. And hung like a …

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Carter said aloud.

“Detective?” a passing uniform asked.

“I said,” she repeated clearly, “this is fucking ridiculous.”

He blushed. “That’s what I thought you said. Uh … anything I can do to help?”

Carter shook her head firmly. “No. But I know somebody who can.”

“Okay.” He looked deeply puzzled.

Carter grabbed her bag and headed out. On the way, she pulled out her cell phone.

 ***

Joss looked down at her plain blue blouse. She’d left her jacket, and her gun and badge, in the trunk of her car. She wished she’d gone home to change. And shower.

And talk herself out of this.

Because this was clearly madness.

She reached down and undid her top button.

“Very nice,” Marconi said appreciatively.

Joss looked up at him. He was staring right down the front of her blouse. Her cheeks got warm. But she didn’t re-button it.

Anthony sat down across from her. “Detective.”

“Marconi.”

“Everything alright?”

“Fine.”

He folded his hands on the table and waited patiently.

Carter hesitated. There was still time to change her mind. She could change her story. Update him on the Armenian. Or assure him that there was no update. Yes, that would work. That was a decent excuse for having him meet her in a hotel bar in the middle of the night.

As she opened her mouth to speak, Marconi smirked at her.

It was just a tiny curl of his mouth. Most of it was in his eyes. Knowing, and teasing.

She wanted to slap him into next week.

Or to fuck his brains out.

Or both.

“Thanks for meeting me,” she said.

“Always glad to oblige a lady.”

Carter’s mouth went dry. She sipped her drink. “Sorry,” she said belatedly, “can I order you something?”

He shook his head. His eyes still glinted with mischief. “What’s on your mind, Detective?”

His tone said he already knew damn well what was on her mind. _Arrogant son of a bitch_ , she thought. Yet she felt herself getting warm already. There was something deeply appealing about his cock-sure attitude.

_Cock-sure. Yes, please._ She took a deep breath. “You’re on my mind, Anthony.”

“Really.”

“Of course you already knew that.”

The shoulders of his damn black leather jacket came up in a tiny shrug.

“I’ve had a hell of a bad day,” Carter said swiftly. “We’ve got what looks like a serial killer, and a vicious one, with no leads and nowhere to look. If she kills one more we can call in the Feds, but until then it’s my case and it’s working my last damn nerve.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marconi answered. “How can I help?”

Joss moved her hand to reveal the room key card on the table. “Come upstairs with me.”

Anthony blinked. “Well. That was right to the point.”

“I offered to buy you a drink first,” she reminded him.

He sat back. Carter was strangely pleased to have knocked the smug out of him, even momentarily. She was also suddenly uncertain. If he was surprised by her offer, she might have been reading him all wrong.

“I really like you, Detective,” Marconi began slowly. “I mean, _really_ like you.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“So … even though I am very tempted, I’m going to say no.”

Carter’s cheeks went hot. She knew she was blushing fiercely. “Oh.”

“You don’t know,” he explained quickly. “The reason you think you want me, it’s …” He was blushing too. Carter didn’t know why, but his scar was definitely darker. “I’m not … what you think I am. I’m not anything you really want. It’s just a physical thing.”

Joss’s heart pounded in her chest. She wanted to crawl under the table. She wished for a sudden shoot-out to happen, so she could leave in the confusion. Anything would be better than sitting here listening to this man trying to explain why he didn’t want to have sex with her. “Yeah, I didn’t actually think it was true love, Anthony.”

He shook his head. “You don’t even like me. I kidnapped your son.”

“I remember,” she snapped coldly.

“So of all the guys in this city that would love to take you to bed, why’d you call me?”

Carter snagged the card off the table. “You’re right. This was a bad idea.” She stood up. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

Marconi stood up, too. “Detective – Joss.” He reached for her arm, but she pulled sharply away from him. “Please listen. You are a beautiful woman, a very desirable …”

“Spare me,” she said, looking away. “I get it. You’re not interested. My mistake. Sorry.” She pushed past him and headed for the door.

He stayed at her elbow. “If we go upstairs tonight, Joss, you’ll hate yourself tomorrow.”

“You’re probably right.” She hit the parking lot and walked as fast as she could away from him.

“I’m right,” he insisted, half-trotting beside her. “Believe me. Look, I know this sounds crazy, but there’s this … this thing, about me. A heritage. I can get anybody I want into bed. Anybody.”

This man really was _completely_ insufferable. “Ego much?” she snapped.

“It’s not ego, it’s just true. I look at a woman, I think I’d like to sleep with her, and it happens. Any woman. Any man, for that matter.”

Carter paused for half a step, then continued to stride to her car. “You and Elias, huh?”

“That’s different,” he said, unembarrassed. “We’re in love.”

She spun around. “If you’re in love with him, how come you keep kissing other people?”

He shrugged. “I like kissing other people. I like having sex with other people.”

“And Elias is okay with that?”

“He likes sex with other people, too.”

Carter stared off into the distance for a moment. This was all developing way too fast. And her emotions were too riled up. Between Marconi’s unexpected rejection and his unexpected declaration of love for his boss … and her own completely unreasonable desire for the man in the first place …

She did not want to ask. She’d embarrassed herself enough for one night. But she couldn’t help it. “So if you’re not exclusive …”

“Carter, I told you, I really like you.” He put his hands on her upper arms.

“Get the fuck off me.”

His grip tightened. “If you liked me, and you just wanted to have sex with me as friends, believe me, we’d be making out in the elevator right now. But you _don’t_ like me, Carter. You think I’m an asshole. And you’re right. I am every bad thing you think I am. But I’m not enough of an asshole to let you do something I know you’ll regret the minute it’s over.”

“That’s very noble of you,” Carter sneered.

Marconi’s hands dropped away. He looked actually hurt. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m not that noble. So fine, let’s go. Let’s go upstairs right now. Let’s break the bed. Let’s go.”

“You know what? I remember where I left my vibrator now, so I guess I don’t need you after all.”

“I wish you understood,” he said. He seemed sincere. “I wish I could explain.”

Carter took a deep breath. She could not think straight. As furious as she was at this man, as humiliated as she was, she still _wanted_ him. Badly.

She leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Anthony.”

“Good night, Joss.” He backed away and let her get into the car.

When she looked up, he was gone.

 *** 


	3. Chapter 3

“Jason Breslin ,” the uniformed cop told them in the hospital hallway. “College junior. His roommate walked in on them, just in time to save his life.”

“He here?” Carter asked. “The roommate?”

“In the waiting room.”

“Keep him there.”

“You got it.”

The detectives went into the room.

The young man was sitting up in the hospital bed. His skin was the color of pale mocha, but he had much darker circles under his eyes. He seemed wan and shaken, but he was conscious and fully alert.

There was a straight, deep mark around his neck where the rope had bruised and scraped skin away.

“Jason?” Carter said. She showed her badge. “I’m Detective Carter. This is Detective Fusco. We’d like to talk to you about what happened this morning.”

The boy drew a deep breath. “I, um, I already talked to the cop …”

“Just tell us again,” Fusco said gruffly. “The uni’s always screw it up.”

The vic glanced at Carter, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s just, you know, it was …”

He had really beautiful eyes, she thought. Big and dark and very vulnerable. “You met a woman,” she said simply. “You took her back to your room and had sex with her.”

“It was her idea,” the boy insisted. “I swear, it wasn’t like I forced her or anything, she wasn’t drunk, or …”

“We know,” Fusco assured him.

“You know?” Breslin  blinked at them. “You know how?”

“We believe this woman has killed two other men,” Carter said. “Both times she had consensual sex with them and then she strangled them with an extension cord.”

The boy’s hand shot up to his neck. He touched the wound, then winced and dropped his hand. “She had a rope,” he told them. “With me, she had rope thing, skinny, like a clothes line.”

“Cotton? That white stuff?” Fusco asked. He glanced at Carter. They knew from the crime lab exactly what kind of rope their killer had used on the other victims. They boy hadn’t bit on the extension cord line she’d fed him; it was more proof that they were dealing with the same killer.

“It was yellow,” the boy said. “Nylon. Like, um … my uncle has a boat, it’s the kind he uses to hold the bumpers on. Not to tie up to the dock with, just the skinny stuff.”

Joss liked how observant the young man was. Pretty and smart. Always a good combination.

“Good,” Carter said. “That’s good. She brought it with her?”

“She must have,” Breslin  said. “I didn’t have anything like that in my room.”

“She had a purse with her?”

“A backpack,” he told them. “Not real big, one of those bike bag things.”

“Where did you meet her?” Fusco asked.

The boy hesitated.

“After-hours club?” Carter prompted gently. “We don’t care about that.”

Breslin  nodded. “At the Study Hall.”

They both knew the place. It was a dive, cheap liquor and cheaper beer, a hole in the wall joint near the college that didn’t look too closely at ID’s. “What time was that?” Carter asked.

“It was about … three in the morning, I guess. It was getting crowded, all the regular bars closing. This girl came up to me, asked if I’d buy her a beer.”

“Just like that?” Fusco asked.

“Yeah.”

Carter couldn’t blame the girl. She might have hit on this boy herself, ten years or so ago. “She give you a name?”

“She said to call her Angel.”

“Angel.”

The boy shrugged. “I know it’s stupid, but … I just figured, she didn’t want me to know her name, turnabout’s fair play, right? I told her my name was Valentino. She just laughed. We talked a while, had a couple beers, and then she asked if we could go back to my place.”

Joss Carter felt the color creep into her own cheeks. She’d done pretty much the same thing the night before. Only her target had turned her down.

And she hadn’t even planned to murder him at the end of the night.

Something about this young man reminded her very much of Anthony Marconi. The big brown eyes, she supposed, and maybe the pitch of his voice, his accent. But there was something more.

“What’d she look like?” Fusco asked. “Think you could pick her out of a line-up?”

“Sure,” Breslin  said. “She was gorgeous. White girl, real pale. She had these really dark eyes and this long black hair …” He paused, frowned. “I don’t think that was her real color, though. Her hair, it felt sort of sticky. Tacky, like, you know? Last St. Patty’s day we all sprayed our hair with green stuff. It felt like that.”

“How about her height, her weight?” Carter asked.

He frowned again. “She was a little taller than you. And kinda skinny. Good ti – sorry, good, um …”

“Breasts,” Carter supplied.

“Yeah, but her hips were real skinny. Almost bony.”

“Any scars, tattoos, anything like that?” Fusco prompted.

“Not that I saw.”

“So you took her back to your room,” Carter continued, “and then what?”

“And then … you know. We hooked up. She seemed … completely normal, you know? She was into it. She said …” The boy stopped dead.

“What?”

Breslin  licked his lips, uneasy. “She said I didn’t have to wear a condom. But, um … I did anyhow.”

“How come?”

He looked back and forth between them. “I’m not stupid. If a random tells you you don’t need to wear a condom, you can be damn sure you _do_ need to wear one, you know? ‘Cause God only knows how many other guys she’s said that too. I’m not judging, don’t get me wrong, I like a casual hook-up as well as the next guy, but … yeah, I wasn’t going to chance it.”

“Was she mad about that?” Carter asked. “Did she argue?”

“No. She was cool.” Breslin  shook his head. “She was more than cool. She was … into it. Really into it. Like … freaky into it.”

“She wore you out,” Fusco predicted.

“Yeah she did.”

_Rode him hard and put him away wet_ , Carter thought. She bit the inside of her lip, hard. What the hell was wrong with her? This young man was barely older than her own son. And he was the victim of a violent attack. It was completely inappropriate for her to be thinking about him the way she was.

He was damned sexy. Fine. There were a lot of sexy men out there. But she was a detective. She was not going to let her sexual frustration interfere in any way with her job. “And then when you couldn’t go again,” she prompted carefully, “she reached for the rope?”

The boy shuddered. “I guess. I had my eye closed. She got off the bed, I thought she was … I don’t know, going to the bathroom or getting dressed or something … and then she climbed back on top of me and I was like, no, I can’t … and then she had this rope around my neck.”

“You try to fight her off?” Fusco asked.

“Yeah, of course.” He held his hands up. His fingertips were raw; two nails had what looked like blood under them. “I tried as hard as I could. And then shit went all black, and then … and then the next thing I knew there were paramedics.”

They asked him a few more questions, and called for a sketch artist to meet with him. The boy seemed suddenly exhausted as the experience caught up to him. They sent a nurse in to check on him on their way out.

Carter was frankly glad to be away from the boy. He unsettled her, in a distinctly sexual way that she could not explain. She needed to get her head straight.

The roommate didn’t have much to add. He’d spent the night with his girlfriend, and only stopped back at his room to get his phone charger. He’d walked in on a dark-haired woman on top of his roommate. That was nothing new, Breslin apparently scored quite often. He’d been going to just turn his back, grab the charger and go, but then his roommate’s hand flopped over the side of the bed. He yelled, and the woman jumped off and ran.

“She ran out naked?” Fusco asked.

The boy stopped and thought about it. “No, she had a … a dress on, or a robe or something. It was open in the front, I mean, I got, you know, full frontal, but …”

“She took the rope with her?” Carter asked.

“No, she left it around his neck. It was really tight. Dug in, you know? I had to unwrap it, loosened it up. Then he started breathing, like gasping, and I called 911.”

They questioned him a little further, and asked him to stick around and meet with the sketch artist, too. He agreed. Carter borrowed a hospital form and wrote a note on the back of it asking his instructor to excuse him from his morning exam. She clipped one of her business cards to it, just in case.

 ***

“This boy got lucky,” Fusco said, in the car. “In more ways than one.”

“Yeah he did.”

“So, we get the sketches, show them around the dorm and the bar?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Carter answered listlessly.

“Might as well get some lunch while we wait.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay, Carter?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “Just had kind of a late night. And this killer … I got a feeling we’re not going to get anything on the sketch. We already know her prints and DNA aren’t in the system. It’s good that he’s alive, but it was just dumb luck.”

“Dumb luck’s better than no luck at all,” Fusco countered. He steered the sedan out of the hospital parking lot. “None of these vics seem to have anything in common.”

“I know. Different ages, different neighborhoods, different jobs, different ethnic groups.”

“All good with the ladies, apparently,” he said.

“Maybe our killer is hunting men she thinks are promiscuous?”

“Maybe.” Fusco shrugged. “None of them are married, have any significant others. So it’s not like they’re cheating on someone.”

Carter nodded. Marconi and Elias were in love, she thought suddenly. She still hadn’t quite processed that idea. And they had an open relationship, both of them allowed to take lovers on the side. They didn’t consider it cheating.

But Marconi didn’t want to not-cheat with _her_.

“ … you think?” Fusco asked.

“What?”

He glanced over at her. “You sure you’re okay, Carter?”

“Yeah, I was just … thinking about something else. What did you say?”

“I said, if she’s going to bang her vics before she kills them, I can see why she picked Breslin. That kid is seriously hot, don’t you think?”

Joss stared at him. “Don’t you have a girlfriend, Fusco?”

“I’m not saying _I_ would bang him,” Fusco protested mildly. “I’m just saying, if I did bat from that side of the plate, I would definitely take my swings at him. There’s something about him. That’s all.” He shrugged. “You don’t see it?”

“I see it,” Carter admitted faintly. Somehow it made her feel better to hear her partner acknowledge the college boy’s attractiveness. “Something about him, like you said.”

“That boy’s gonna go far in life.”

“At least he’ll get the chance.”

 ***

The detectives had a surprisingly good lunch at a very plain diner near the hospital, then went back and collected their sketches. Both of the young man had described a pretty woman in her early twenties. Caucasian, dark hair, possibly fake, dark eyes, also possibly fake. Breslin said she’d been wearing a wrap-front dress at the bar, and that squared with what his roommate had seen. Beyond that, they added nothing helpful.

They got the pictures up on the police network and issued an APB.

The bartender at the after-hours club remembered the woman. “It was weird,” he said. “She was really hot, for such a plain-looking chick, you know?” When pressed, he couldn’t explain any further. He’d never seen her before, and didn’t know anything about her.

No one in the dorm had seen the woman, and the room didn’t yield anything new or unexpected.

Surveillance cameras showed a woman of medium height and build keeping her face turned away from the cameras.

Carter put a call in to tell the FBI about their probable serial killer. The receptionist put her right into voicemail.

 ***

In the early evening they circled back to the hospital. Jason Breslin’s mother was there, fussing over him. His father had died some years before. The young man didn’t have anything to add to his previous story.

As tired as she was, Carter still found the college student stupidly attractive.

They’d stationed a uniformed cop outside his door, just in case, but their perp had not obligingly showed up to attack the boy again.

“We got nothing,” Joss said wearily as they walked out the front door.

“Evening, Detectives.”

Carter spun. Anthony Marconi was leaning against the brick wall next to the hospital entrance, half-hidden in shadows. He wore his customary jeans and black leather jacket, and also his customary smirk.

“What do you want?” Fusco asked warily.

“Brought you something,” he answered. He gestured, and they both moved closer to where he waited. He reached into his pocket. Fusco reached for his gun. Marconi grinned reassuringly and brought his hand back out with only a folded sheet of paper in it. He presented it, grandly, to Carter.

The paper was heavy and thick, the kind people used to print their resumes on back when people printed resumes. It was folded in precise thirds. She opened in, half-turned so that the sheet was in the light and also so her partner could read over her shoulder.

The handwriting on the paper was as elegant and formal as the paper itself. It looked liked something Joss’ grandmother would have written, when she was alive. It was very flowery, with flourishes. She had the feeling it had been written with a fountain pen.

There was a list of men’s names written in a neat column. It was alphabetical, and the first two entries had been lined through. Cody Atkins and Brian Brant. Jason Brelin’s name was next, with a little dash next to it. After that were a dozen more names.

“Where did you get this?” Carter demanded. 

Marconi smirked again, this time at Fusco. “Raven asked me to give it to you.”

“Raven who?” Joss snapped.

Fusco looked like he’d been gut-punched. “Raven … Raven?” he asked faintly.

“Uh-huh.”

“You … know Raven?”

“Biblically,” Marconi sighed. “Don’t we all?”

Carter bristled, but her partner seemed to ignore that comment.

“Is she … she’s not …” Lionel cleared his throat. “She’s not killing these guys, is she?”

Anthony cocked his head. “With a _rope_? She said you’d know better.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Who’s Raven,” Carter insisted, “and who are these men, and why are they targets?”

“The ones with the little marks have already been warned,” Marconi told her. “The others she hasn’t been able to locate yet.”

“ _Who is she_?”

He looked to Fusco again, shrugged. “I told her it would be hard to explain. She said you’d believe her.”

“I believe her,” Lionel said fervently. “We gotta find these guys.”

He reached for the list. Carter snapped it back out of his reach. “We’re not doing anything until you tell me who this Raven is, why we should believe her, and where she got these particular names. And for a bonus, let’s hear who she thinks the killer is, too. If it’s not her.”

“Carter,” Fusco said, “even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. But Raven … if this is what I kinda think it is … she would know. I trust her.”

“You and him both slept with her, and you trust her? Because that doesn’t sound like a very good character reference to me.”

“Hey,” Marconi protested mildly.

Carter remembered too late that she’d tried very recently to sleep with Marconi. She hoped desperately that he wouldn’t call her out on. If he did, her only defense was that at least she hadn’t tried to bed Fusco, too. But Anthony just smiled again. Then he half-turned, very deliberately, and looked toward a silver SUV that was parked down the block.

“Fuck,” Fusco said under his breath. “She’s _here_?”

“She seemed to think you wouldn’t want to see her up close and personal.” There was a little question in Marconi’s tone.

Fusco stared at the vehicle with such longing that Carter felt a wave of embarrassment on his behalf. “Lionel,” she said briskly, “get it together.”

He face went red. “Right. Sorry. But …” his gaze drifted toward the vehicle again, “… but you gotta believe me, Carter. She’s, um … she’s …”

“She’s got no reason to lie,” Anthony supplied.

“That, yeah.”

“I want to meet her,” Carter declared.

“Not a good idea,” Fusco answered. “Seriously, it’s not …” He looked at Marconi. “Does it work both ways?” he asked. “Raven’s … thing. You know.”

“I’m sure it does,” the lieutenant answered. “But if the lady insists.”

Fusco moaned.

Carter glared at him. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you?”

“Not here,” Marconi said. He handed her a business card. “Meet us there in half an hour.”

Joss realized that the lieutenant was agreeing to the introduction because that had been the plan all along. He’d expected her to demand a meeting. She wondered if this Raven and her mysterious list were bait in a trap of some sort. But that was unnecessarily elaborate: Marconi could have just gunned them down when they walked out the door, if that was his plan. “Fine.”

“See you soon.” Anthony gave her a smile that she felt all the way to her toes, then turned and walked to the SUV.

Fusco groaned again when the vehicle drove away. “Joss … this is a bad idea.”

“You think it’s a trap?” She was glad to have her partner back thinking, even though he was still a step behind.

“No, I think it’s …” He ran his hand over his face. “Raven is … she’s …” He paused, then gave up. “We should get somebody trying to track those guys down, at least,” he finally said, gesturing to the list.

Carter glanced over the list again. “You really believe her?”

“I absolutely believe her.”

“Kinda sounds like you’re thinking with the little head, Fusco.”

His cheeks went red again, but he didn’t deny it. “After you meet her, Carter, you’ll know why.”

“What, is she some kind of irresistible seductress?” Joss jeered.

“That’s exactly what she is,” Lionel answered solemnly.

 ***


	4. Chapter 4

The townhouse was understated and elegant – and heavily secured. It reminded Carter of a place Finch would have owned. But this particular address belonged to Carl Elias.

She spotted three probably-armed men patrolling outside. She glanced over her shoulder, guessing there was at least one more on the roof. But none of them made any attempt to stop her.

Getting in would be easy. Getting out might be a whole different matter.

Elias met them at the door and invited them in. “If I’d known you’d be joining me,” he said, “I would have prepared dinner for you. I could send out for something, if you like.”

“We’re not going to be here that long,” Carter said evenly. “I’d like to ask this Raven person a few questions.”

“Of course.” He gestured them into the living room.

Marconi waited there with a young woman. She was Caucasian, mid-twenties, brown eyes, light brown hair, shoulder length. Medium height and build. Fairly pretty, more fresh-scrubbed than made-up. She wore a flowered sun dress and sandals. There was nothing extraordinary about her.

At least she didn’t look anything like the killer in their sketches.

Fusco strode over to the woman. She hurried to meet him in the middle of the room, and threw her arms around him. “Lionel,” she said warmly, “I am so glad to see you.”

Lionel didn’t answer. He squeezed the young woman tightly in his arms.

It went on long enough to become uncomfortable – at least for Joss. She glanced at the other men. They had both dropped back. Elias had a glass of wine. He held it up, offering to get one for Carter. She shook her head. “Fusco. We’re supposed to be working here.”

Lionel dropped his arms and backed away, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said, to Raven. “Sorry, I just …”

She smiled.

The smile made Joss’ knees go weak. Whoever this woman was, there was something about her. She wasn’t anything all that special. Pretty enough, clean and fresh, but …

… _it would be fun to kiss her_ , Carter thought. _She’s probably a hell of a lot of fun in bed._

Carter took a deep breath. She was a hetero woman. But she was open enough to admit that every so often a woman crossed her radar who made her curious. This Raven was definitely one of those women.

Or maybe she was just losing her mind. It seemed like everyone she met lately made her want to get freaky with them. She felt like a damn dog in heat. It had started with Marconi, and maybe being turned down by him had made her turn her desire toward first a college boy and now this woman …

The woman’s smile dropped away. “I know this is unexpected, and very likely unwelcome, but I had to contact you. These men who are being killed …”

Fusco grabbed her hands. “Marconi says you didn’t kill them.”

“No, of course not.”

Carter could see that her partner instantly believed the woman. “Oh, good,” he breathed.

They got lost in staring at each other until Carter cleared her throat.

“Sorry. Um, Raven, this is … this is my partner, Joss Carter. Carter, this is Raven.”

“Raven what?” Joss asked.

“Just Raven,” the woman said. She turned her full attention to Carter for a moment, and the feeling caught Joss like a hot blast. Raven was – interested. Sexually. Joss could not have said how she knew, but she _did_ know. Raven would happily take her to bed with her and teach her everything there was to know about making love with another woman. Raven would accept her and treasurer her, and pleasure her until she could not do anything but cry in bliss, and Raven would …

“Damn it,” Carter said aloud, under her breath. She physically turned away from the woman’s gaze and made herself take a deep breath.

When she looked up, she was gazing right into Anthony Marconi’s eyes. He smiled, a genuine smile and not his usual smirk. His look was full of understanding. They said he knew exactly what she felt. About the undeniable joy she felt in Raven’s gaze, and the unmistakable warming that centered on her sex. He knew, because he’d felt it.

And he’d agreed to it, submitted to it, experienced everything Raven had to offer …

… and so had Fusco …

Carter looked at her partner. He was gazing at Raven with a goofy grin on his face and an obvious budge in his pants.

“I’m sorry,” Raven said, quite sincerely, to her. “I am too upset. I’m attracting far more than I intend to.”

_Attracting what?_ Carter wondered. But the next instant something changed. It felt as if the room got markedly cooler. The heat began to leave her cheeks, and her groin. Her mind cleared. She still wanted very much to look at Raven, but looking was enough. The drive to reach out and touch her faded.

Fusco said, “Thank you. But I still can’t be alone with you.”

Raven nodded solemnly as she turned her attention back to him. “Of course not. I am truly sorry, about last time. I never intended to harm you …”

“I know. John explained it to me. I’m actually a little … flattered.”

“Or to deceive you.”

“I know. And that’s not why. Not entirely why. It’s just … I’m with someone now. _In love_ with someone now.”

Joss frowned deeply. What the hell? Fusco acted like if he got this woman alone she was going to jump his bones. She clearly liked him, but he wasn’t exactly Don Juan …

“I understand,” Raven said. “Of course I will honor your monogamy.” She leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “I am so pleased for you.”

_I want her to kiss me, too_ , Carter thought, and the heat surged again.

She glanced at Marconi. The lieutenant had his hands clasped very tightly in front of his crotch. It wasn’t, Joss realized, just to hide his own erection, though that was part of it. It was because if he unclenched his fingers he was going to grab for Raven.

She managed to turn her head to check on Elias. He had both hands wrapped around his wine glass. His knuckles were white.

Carter looked back at Raven. “Who are you?” she demanded. She hated how harsh her voice sounded.  But alarm bells went off in the back of her mind. It wasn’t her; it was affecting the men, too. There was something very wrong about this woman. Joss had been a cop far too long to ignore her intuition.

“ _Who_ is not so important as _what_.” Raven went oddly soft, glowy. Like one of those magazine ads for a bride beaming in her wedding gown. Endearing.

“Then _what_ are you?” Carter took two steps closer. “What the _fuck_ are you?”

Fusco half-turned. He took up a position to defend Raven if his partner came any closer. But when he dropped the woman’s hands, his eyes cleared a little, too. “Carter – Joss. You have to understand.”

“How can she?” Elias asked quietly. “We can’t possibly explain in a way she can understand. And until she understands, we can’t go forward to protect the Descendants.”

Carter looked at him, at Marconi, at Fusco. They were all looking at Raven for an answer.

The young woman sighed. “Very well. Carl, might I make use of your wine closet for a moment?”

He nodded. “Of course.” He set his wine glass down. “But I would suggest that we gentlemen retreat to the bedroom.”

Carter blinked. “What?”

“You’re not in any danger,” Fusco assured her. “Raven just needs to … show you something. Once you see it, you’ll understand. Sorta.”

Raven moved past them and opened an ornate gate to a wine storage room just off the kitchen.

“But give him your gun,” Marconi added.

Carter glared at him. “What?”

“Why?” Fusco asked.

Raven stepped into the closet and pulled the gate closed behind her.

“So she can’t shoot off the lock,” Elias said. He locked the gate behind the young woman, then passed the key through to her.

“We’ll be right in the next room,” Anthony said. “And she’d locked in. There’s no danger to you, Detective. But you need to give Fusco your gun.”

“This is crazy,” Carter protested.

“If you want to know what’s going on, Detective,” Elias said mildly, “you need to give up your weapon. For everyone’s safety.”

Very reluctantly, Carter handed her weapon to her partner. The three men walked into a back room and closed the door.

Joss marched over to the locked gate and tugged it. It was sturdy and securely locked . She paused and tapped her left foot against her right ankle, where her back-up weapon was. Reassured, puzzled, she looked at the mysterious woman. “Okay. What are you going to show me?”

“I’m not human,” Raven announced calmly.

“Okay.” Suddenly Joss felt like she was back on solid mental ground. Their witness was completely crazy. She didn’t know how she’d missed the signs before, and she didn’t know how Fusco had missed it either. But it was the obvious answer, and everything else made sense in light of it. Raven, or whatever her name really was, was simply batshit crazy.

And whatever was wrong with her, it made her somehow uninhibited sexually. Available.  Maybe the men hadn’t caught something off because they were, as she’d told Fusco earlier, thinking with their cockheads instead of their brains.

“Then what are you?” Carter asked mildly.

“I’m Old,” Raven answered.

“You don’t look old.”

“Look again.”

The woman was suddenly different. Different than she had been, and different from anyone Joss had ever seen. She was very pale. Her face and limbs were long and slender. Her hair was long, too, straight, shiny and black. Her eyes were also black. Her lips were red and full and bright.

Carter got her new description in a glance, from long habit as a cop. And then …

And then all she wanted, the only thing in the world that mattered, was getting to that woman, getting her hands on her, her mouth, getting their clothes off, getting skin-to-skin with her, touching and tasting and …

It wasn’t lust. It was _Lust_ , in its purest form.

Lust Elemental.

Raven was Lust. Timeless, fervent, pure.

And then she was just a pretty young woman in a sundress again.

Carter realized that she was hanging on the gate. Her hands clenched painfully around the ornate bars, and her left foot was wedged between them where she’d tried to kick her way in. Her throat hurt, and she realized she’d been screaming.

She worked her foot lose and opened her hands. Her palms were bright red. One was bleeding slightly. She tried to take a step back. Her knees buckled, and she had to grab the gate again to stay upright.

Her whole body shook with frustration. She’d been on the verge of a mind-numbing orgasm and the stimulation had been suddenly taken away.

She took several deep breaths.

From the back of the wine closet, very quietly, Raven said, “Do you see now?”

“Yeah.” Carter’s own voice was very quiet. “But I don’t understand it.”

Raven came up to the gate and handed the key through. Joss took it, but it took her three tries to unlock the closet. Her hands shook wildly. She focused on her breathing.

Raven stepped out and put her arms around her.

Carter sagged into her embrace. It wasn’t as good as the climax that had been denied, but it was still good. Still so very good. If she could just stay there, just breath the scent of her hair, feel her tenderness …

She straightened up. Raven kept one arm around her and guided her to the couch. They sat down, and again Joss settled her head against the woman’s shoulder. She was mother and grandmother, best friend and angel. And probably demon. Joss didn’t care. She breathed.

Several minutes passed. Carter felt the coolness sweep over again. She calmed. Finally, reluctantly, she sat up. “Okay. So. What _are_ you?”

“I am what your grandmother’s grandmother warned her sons about. I am the demon who will steal his seed in the night. I am a fallen angel. I am the sin older than Original Sin. I am the very path to damnation.” Raven smiled ruefully. “Or else I am a Muse, an angel of inspiration and art and beauty. But I am not much inbetween.”

“You’re a succubus.” Carter was surprised at how normal that word sounded coming out of her mouth. As if she we talking about a child’s Halloween costume. _Oh, you’re an astronaut._ Except this wasn’t dress-up. This was very, very real.

“I am. And I have many other names. But that one will do, if it’s easiest for you.”

Joss thought about it. It had been a long time since she’d had a mythology class. “I thought … you kill men, right? You seduce them and then kill them.”

Raven nodded. “Yes. In times past I killed to feed.”

“But not anymore?”

“It has been over five hundred years since I killed someone who was not willing to die. I mean – willing to die prior to being in bed with me.”

“And you …” Suddenly Marconi’s comment about her not needing a rope made sense. “You don’t use a weapon.”

“You would find my consorts dead of heart failure, I suppose. Exhaustion.”

“So the woman who’s killing these men …”

“Perhaps we should ask the gentlemen to join us before we continue.”

“Yeah.” But Carter felt a deep reluctance to do so. It was deeply pleasant, to sit there with Raven’s arm around her shoulders, to have her all to herself. On impulse, she turned and kissed the woman very lightly on the lips.

Raven didn’t pull away from the kiss, but she didn’t deepen it, either.

“Sorry.” Carter moved a little away from her on the couch.

“You are so very beautiful,” Raven answered regretfully. “But I am trying _very_ hard to be good. Right now.”

“Right now?”

“I’ll leave you my number,” the woman promised. “If you’re curious some time in the future … it would be my honor and great joy to indulge with you.”

Carter felt the blood rush from her brain to her sex. She understood, with suddenly clarity, why men could be so stupid when they were aroused. The amount of common sense she lost when this woman kissed her on the cheek was insane.

Raven kissed her once more. Then she called for the men.

 ***

Elias made espresso and served it in tiny china cups with gold leaf around the rims. They sat around one end of the large dining table, with Raven at the head, and talked about their killer.

When Raven was calm, Carter noted gratefully, she was like any other woman. It was only when she became agitated that her sexual attractiveness began to affect the others. The woman clearly knew this; she maintained her equanimity with careful attention.

“This woman,” Fusco said. He slid the two artist sketches over to her. “She calls herself Angel. Do you know her?”

Raven’s mouth twisted at the corner. “Her mother named her Angelina.”

“Angelina what?” Carter pressed. “Where can we find her?”

“Brevard, though I doubt she’s kept that name. She was raised in Paris. I haven’t seen her since she was a child. Ten years, perhaps?” Her hand traced over the lines of the sketch. “Poor little thing.”

“This poor little thing’s killed at least two men,” Fusco reminded her. “And tried to kill a third one.”

Raven nodded solemnly. “She must be quite mad. It happens sometimes. Unfortunate.”

“She’s not … like you, is she?” Fusco asked.

“No.” Raven hesitated. “Yes, I suppose, a bit. But not in the way that you mean. Angelina is a Descendant.

“A descendant of whom?”

“Of me. Or more precisely, of my kind.”

Marconi shifted in his chair, but did not speak.

“Wait,” Fusco said. “How does that even work? You can, uh, you can bre – you can reproduce with humans?”

“We could, a very long time ago. Before your kind could even count time.” Raven’s cheeks went pink. “It was a bit bestial, I suppose. In any case, yes, at one time our people were fertile together. And the half-breed offspring produced were exquisite. Beautiful beyond all imagination. But …” She paused, suddenly saddened. “But they lacked the ability to disguise their true appearance as we did. And so they became objects of worship, but also of great fear and brutal slaughter.”

Carter reached over and touched her arm. “But some of them survived,” she prompted gently.

“Yes.” Raven nodded, grateful, and Joss reluctantly removed her hand. “Some survived. Bred with humans again, produced quarter-blood children. Those survived better; they were less easily identified. They survived, they reproduced. And so on, down the generations.”

“Angelina carries a drop of the Old Blood,” Elias said. “And the men she’s hunting are also Descendants. Is this a family feud of some sort?”   

Raven gave him a little smile. “Perhaps. But unlikely. They probably don’t even know each other.”

“Then how’d they end up on that list?” Fusco asked.

“Where did you _get_ that list?” Carter seconded.

“From the internet,” the woman confessed. She pronounced the last word carefully – _in-ter-net_ – as if it were unfamiliar in her mouth.

“What, there’s like a Tinder for Descendants?” Marconi asked.

“Well … yes. In a way.” Raven sipped her espresso, licked a droplet off her lip. Carter felt it right to her core. She could tell by the way that Fusco flinched that he did, too. “Some time ago, three hundred years or so, a handful of Descendants in London learned about their heritage from one of my – sisters. In her description she was particularly rapturous about the half-blood children, and her audience decided to try to re-create them.”

“What? How?”

“It would be easy now,” Elias mused. “Artificial insemination, cloning – if it’s not already possible, it soon will be.”

Raven looked at him with a mixture of hope and horror so clear on her face that every human at the table shuddered. Carter touched her arm again. “That’s not what we’re talking about here,” she reminded her gently. “Tell us about Angelina and the list.”

The woman took a deep breath, and the sudden tension dissipated. “These men and women, they decided that if they each carried a single drop of the Blood, then children they produced together would logically have two drops. And if an offspring with two drops bore the child of another with two drops, that child would logically have four. And so on. They hoped, over a great span of time, to undiluted the Old Blood, to reconstitute the breed.”

“Did it work?” Fusco asked.

“They progressed for a few generations,” Raven said. “There were issues, of course. The Blood is famously infertile, so the more highly bred the descendants, the less likely they could continue to bear children. And, of course, telling a child in his cradle that he will marry the woman you’ve selected for him – well, children get their own ideas about such matters. And finally, they began with a fairly small community. So in five or six generations other genetic issues began to present themselves with increasing frequency.”

“They were too inbred to continue,” Carter said.

“Yes. But at the same time, they had begun to develop a list of other Descendants as they encountered them. They formed a loose coalition, friendships, correspondence, things like that. They expanded their reproductive horizons, as it were. Then when technology developed sufficiently, they formed … a Facebook group.”

Elias chortled out loud. The others just stared at her.

“It’s a _secret_ group,” Raven added. “Whatever that means.”

“So Angelina just searched for Descendants in Greater New York?” Carter asked.

Raven nodded. “Just as I did.”

“You know you can just print right from the computer, right?” Fusco said.

Raven gave him a wry smile. “I couldn’t find a font I liked.”

“Do they even know?” Elias asked. “These men. Do they realize why they’re targets?”

“Probably not. For the most part,” she gestured to Anthony, “unless they’re told, they just think they’ve always been very lucky in love.”

“But why’s she killing them?” Fusco asked.

“She doesn’t care about breeding with them,” Carter realized. “The condoms. That’s not what she’s after.”

“Most often, when the Descendants turn on one another, it is because one has been scorned or feels betrayed.” Raven bit her lip. “Monogamy is not in our nature. Our way is to enjoy all that all have to offer. If she formed a union with another Descendant and felt that he or she betrayed her – as I said, she is clearly disturbed.”

“So her Descendant boyfriend that Mommy picked out cheats on her, and she goes after all of them,” Lionel said.

“Or her father cheated on her mother, something of that nature. I can’t say for certain, of course, but that is the most likely.”

“So how do we catch her?” Carter wondered.

Elias picked up the list from the center of the table and studied it. “She seems very methodical, but inexperienced. She’s working alphabetically rather than geographically.”

“So she’ll go after the next guy on the list,” Fusco nodded.

“Or she’ll go after the college kid again,” Marconi countered.

“We’ve got him protected,” Carter said. “There’s a uni at his door, and his mother’s with him.”

“But are you certain,” Elias ventured, “that she can’t lure those men in uniform away from the boy’s door?”

“Breslin’s seen her,” Joss countered. “Up close and personal. He’s not going to let her get near him again.”

The men shared a look around the table. “Yeah,” Fusco finally said. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Ask his mother to stay with him tonight,” Raven said.

“She can’t seduce women?” Anthony asked.

“She can, of course. But I doubt she can lure a mother away from her wounded son. That bond is far stronger than any sexual enticement.”

Carter nodded. “Good. I’ll call her. And then we should get on the next one on the list.”

“Russell Dionides,” Elias said.

“Precinct should have an address on him by now,” Fusco said.

Both detectives reached for their phones.

 ***


	5. Chapter 5

“Does Rhonda know?” Carter asked quietly, several hours later.

Her partner glanced over at her. “Know what?”

“About Raven.”

“Oh.” He shifted, peered out through the windshield at the front of the bar. Russell Dionides was the bartender; he was easy to see through the big glass windows. He was olive-skinned, fifty-two, and he wore his jet-black hair in a high pompadour that made him three inches taller. “Sorta. We were on a break.”

Carter looked at him skeptically.

“Last year,” he explained. “Her ex came back, wanted to give it another chance, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Joss remembered that clearly; her partner had been miserable. He’d made her fairly miserable, too. “Where’d you meet her?”

“In a hotel bar.” He shrugged. “J – a friend introduced us.”

“And you just got a room and went at it?”

“We had a beer first.”

“A beer.”

“And finger food.” Fusco’s ears went red. “She liked my fingers.”

Carter stared at him.

“Well, you _asked_ ,” he protested. “She said she liked my fingers. She said I looked … sturdy.”

“Huh.” Joss looked over at the bar again. “Well, she’s not wrong, but that’s not the most flattering description I’ve ever heard.”

“You should hear it the way _she_ says it,” Lionel countered. “Course, the way she says _anything_ … well, you know.”

“I know. And … thanks for introducing us. For trusting me to know who she was.”

“You wouldn’t have believed it any other way.”

“That’s _very_ true.”

Her partner took a long breath. “I’m not sayin’ anything, you know, I mean, what you do in bed, that’s your business, but … if you have the chance and you’ve ever been even a little bit curious …”

“I have her number,” Carter said, just slightly smug.

“I don’t think you’ll ever regret using it,” Fusco answered sincerely.

“So what went down with you and her?”

He gave her a look. “You want all the juicy details, Carter?”

“No, thanks,” Joss laughed. “I’ll get by with the outline on that part. What I want to know is why she apologized today, why she swore she hadn’t meant to hurt you. What’d she do, throw your back out? Give you major rug burn? What?”

Fusco grinned and looked out the window again. The red of his ears crept into his cheeks. “Things got a little out of control.”

“Like break-the-bed out of control?”

“Like Raven out of control. Like, let’s keep going until I die out of control.”

Carter stared at him. “She tried to kill you?”

“She didn’t mean to. Hell, I didn’t even know what she was. Just a pretty girl, you know? Like she was back at Elias’. And then right in the middle she, um …”

“Changed.”

“Yeah. And once she did, I couldn’t stop and she didn’t want to.”

Joss thought about it. She’d tried to tear down the gate to Elias’ wine closet with her bare hands. She would cheerfully have killed anyone who stood between her and Raven in her genuine form …no. She wouldn’t have been able to stop, either. “So what happened?”

Fusco smirked. “John kicked the door in.”

“John. John _Reese_?”

“Yeah.”

“What was he doing there?”

“He’s, uh, he’s the one who introduced us.”

“John _Reese._ Did he know what she was?”

“Yeah.”

“He set you up with a succubus?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Fusco protested quickly. “He didn’t mean for me to get hurt, either. You know that. If Mr. Dark and Moody wanted me dead, he’d just put a bullet in my head.”

“Then what the hell was he doing?”

“She needed to get laid. I needed to get laid. It was just supposed to be an afternoon. Stress reduction, for everybody. Hell, at first I thought he’d hired a hooker for me.”

“You called Raven a hooker. And she went to bed with you anyhow.”

Fusco shrugged. “She let me give her five bucks.”

“Five bucks. That woman is sex with feet, and you gave her five bucks.”

“And everything else she asked for. And way more.”

“You are so full of shit, Fusco.”

“Hey, you know me, Carter. I always give it my best shot. Go above and beyond.”

Joss snorted. “Since when?”

“Well, in bed, anyhow.”

“So John had to kick the door open, and then what? He threw a bucket of cold water on you?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Joss shook her head. “You’re making that up.”

“Ask him.”

“He’d lie, just to see the look on my face.”

“Then ask Raven.”

Carter considered.

“Ask her in bed,” Fusco teased. “You know you want to.”

A new thought came to Joss’ mind. “So John …”

Lionel raised one eyebrow at her.

“And Harold? And Elias?”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“The girl gets around.”

Fusco nodded. “Funny. If I heard that about anybody else, I’d think she was a tramp. But Raven? It just seems … fair, somehow.”

“Yeah. I can see how, with her, just about anything would seem right.” Carter sighed thoughtfully. The way it felt just to touch her hand … “Damn, I almost have to sleep with her now just so I don’t feel left out.”

“Like I said, you won’t regret it.”

“Unless she loses control again.”

He shook his head. “She won’t.”

“You think you’re better in bed than I am?” Carter challenged.

“I think I’ll take the Fifth on that one.”

“God, you have a big ego.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not the only thing about me that’s big.”

“You big liar.”

“Nope. Ask around.”

“I might.”

“Go ahead …”

They both froze, because they both saw her. She had red hair now, or a red wig, but her face was undisguised. She walked into the bar, settled on the stool, and smiled.

Russell Dionides, naturally, smiled back.

 ***

The detectives sat at the last two stools at the bar, closest to the door. Dionides walked down to them, shaking his head apologetically. “Last call, folks. I can get you one round, that’s it.”

Carter cupped her hand on the bar and flashed her badge at him. “Just stand where you are for a minute and stay calm.”

“Don’t look around,” Fusco added urgently under his breath. “Nothing’s going down right now. We need to know about the redhead who just walked in.”

The bartender sighed. “She’s hot, isn’t she?”

“Do you know what a Descendant is?” Carter asked.

He looked blank. “No … I mean, yeah, like an ancestor, only backward? But …”

“Never mind. That woman who seems to attractive to you? She’s using a new pheromone that makes her seem irresistible.”

“I … what? That’s ridiculous.”

“Look at her again,” Fusco said. “Just a quick glance.” Dionides looked over his shoulder at her, as if he was just checking the patrons. “She still as hot as she was a minute ago?”

The bartender shook his head, confused. “No. No, not nearly … what the hell?”

“You got a back room?”

“Yeah, a little office, why?”

“Give me a head start,” Carter said, “then ask her to go back there with you. Let her go first.”

“But …”

“She’s probably not armed,” Fusco told him, “and I’ll be right here. Just get her to the office and my partner will slap the cuffs on her. Nice and neat. Okay?”

“But … you’re going to arrest her for some kind of perfume?”

“We’re going to arrest her,” Carter corrected, “because we think she’s murdered two men and tried to murder a third.”

“And you’re next on the list, pal.”

“Me? Why me? I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

“She got your name off a mailing list,” Joss told him. “Can you do what we asked?”

“Sure, I …” Dionides ran his hand lightly over his perfectly-pommed hair. “Just let me think of what to say …”

“She wants to get you alone,” Fusco said. “You don’t have to work it. Just smile and say, ‘Come with me to the back office.’ Trust me, she will.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“But let me get back there first,” Carter added. She slid to her feet, gave Fusco a wary glance. They both knew it was safer for her to make the arrest, though her partner could probably put up some pretty good resistance against Angel’s attraction abilities. She wasn’t Raven, not by a long shot.

Joss moved casually past the bar. There was a little hallway in the back, with the office and restrooms. She did not look at Angelina. But in the mirror, she saw Dionides moving just a few steps behind her.

As they’d hoped, the bartender barely paused in front of the redhead. He leaned and murmured a few words, and she nodded eagerly, stood up, and moved toward the back as well.

Dionides trailed her.

Once they were in the hallway, Carter turned, held up her badge, and announced, “You’re under arrest, Angelina.”

The woman froze. Then she turned and tried to run. Dionides stood in her way. Carter swore under her breath. But then Fusco shoved him aside and he was there, with his weapon drawn but low, blocking her route back into the bar. “Hands up, sweetheart.”

Angel folded her arms over her chest.

“Hands _up_ ,” Carter repeated, reaching for her own weapon.

The redhead backed against the wall, looked back and forth between them, pulled out her own gun and pointed it at her own chin.

The detectives closed on her from both sides, both stopping just out of her arm’s reach.

“Drop the gun, lady,” Fusco said. “Nobody has to get hurt here.”

“They all deserve to die,” Angel said.

“Maybe so,” Carter agreed, “but that’s not up to you. Put the gun down.”

The woman’s hand began to shake. Her finger flexed over the trigger.

“Angel, don’t do this.” Fusco inched half a step closer. “Just put it down.”

“You back away,” Angelina replied, “or I will kill myself.”

Carter believed her. She had the right look about her. “Angel …” she began.

“I mean it!” Angel said, louder. “Back off or I’ll do it!”

“Put it down, sweetheart.”

“I will pull this trigger right now …”

“Angelina,” a new voice said, very softly.

There was a woman just behind Fusco’s shoulder. She was maybe thirty, short, curvy, blonde. Though she looked completely different than she had a few hours ago, Carter knew it was Raven.

Angelina stared at the newcomer. The hand shook more violently.

Fusco glanced at the woman, then took a single step to the side to give her room.

“Angelina,” the blonde said again, and this time Carter could _feel_ the attraction in that word. “Come, child. I know you’re wounded. Put the weapon away.”

Angel cocked her head, puzzled by the compulsion she felt. “You … who are you?”

Raven took another step toward her. Fusco’s hand landed on her shoulder. He wasn’t going to let her go any closer. “The weapon, Angelina. Give it here.” She held her hand out, palm up, open.

Angelina trembled violently from head to toe. She lowered her hand half-way. “Are you … are you one of the Old Ones?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know. How they are. Why they have to die.”

“The weapon, Angelina.” Raven would have moved again, but Fusco’s hand tightened.

Carter wasn’t sure how long the three of them stood there. Ten seconds, she guessed, but it might as well have been ten years. She felt her pulse racing. She wanted to give up her own weapon, to drop it and throw her arms around the luscious blonde. To kiss her, to taste her …

Against every bit of training she’d ever had, Joss Carter closed her eyes.

It let her hang onto her service weapon while a succubus from before time turned up her power until one of her Descendants bowed to her will.

Something heavy and metal hit the floor at the same time Angelina gave a muffled sob.

The heat and the compulsion stopped.

Carter opened her eyes. Fusco stretched his foot out and kicked the gun away.

Angelina crumpled into Raven’s arms.

The Old One held her for a long moment. She smoothed the woman’s hair, kissed her temple, murmured soft words.

Beyond them, Fusco met Joss’ gaze and nodded. She knew, somehow, that he’d closed his eyes, too.

There was noise behind them in the bar, alarmed voices and movement. Carter ignored them for as long as she could. Then, half-reluctantly, she took Angelina’s arm and eased her out of Raven’s embrace. “Angelina Brevard, or whatever your name is, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

Angel didn’t even seem to hear her. She simply stared, consoled and bereft at once, as the blonde goddess moved past Fusco and disappeared into the crowd.

 ***

Carter got home just in time to kiss her son goodbye as he headed to school. “Rough night?” Taylor asked.

“Interesting night,” Joss allowed. “Very, very interesting.”

“You catch the bad guy?”

 “Girl. Bad girl this time.”

“That’s new.”

“Women can be every bit as dangerous as men, Taylor. Sometimes more so.”

He nodded with mock solemnity. “I know. I grew up with you, remember?”

“Smart ass.” She kissed his cheek one more time, then watched him out to the street before she closed and locked the door. She paused, then, thinking. She was tired. But she was edgy, too. She’d told her son the truth; the day and night before had been very interesting. Very, very interesting. “Chinese curse,” she muttered to herself. “May you live in interesting times.”

She was vaguely hungry, but she couldn’t decide what she wanted to eat. She decided to shower first and see if anything sounded good. Then she’d try to sleep.

It went without saying, she thought as she climbed the stairs, that she was going to masturbate before she slept. She couldn’t even count the hours she’d spent mildly or highly aroused. It’s no wonder she was edgy. She just needed to get herself over the edge. Then she’d probably sleep like the dead.

She put her service gear in the drawer of her bedside table, then stripped off her suit. It smelled bad. She dropped it in the basket in her closet for dry cleaning. On her way across to the bathroom she stripped off the rest of her clothes and threw them in the hamper. It was mostly full; she needed to run a load or two.

_Later_ , she decided firmly.

Just as she reached to turn on the shower, there was a loud knock on the front door.

Joss swore. Ten seconds later and she wouldn’t have heard it.

It was probably Taylor. He’d probably forgotten his lunch money, and his key. If she didn’t answer, he’d have to wait for her to come down – and then she’d have to get dressed and drive him to school.

She grabbed her robe off the back of the bathroom door. It was heavy satin, deep royal purple. She’d picked it out herself and paid way too much money for it. She pulled it on and tied it around her waist as she stomped back down the stairs. “What did you forget?” she demanded as she pulled the door open.

Anthony Marconi slouched with his hip against the railing. He looked her up and down with open appreciation. “Morning, Detective.”

Carter pulled the top of her robe closed tighter. She was very, very aware that she was naked underneath it. And that the chilly morning air made her nipples pop to attention, fully visible under the satin. “What do you want?” she tried to snarl.

Marconi looked away, down the street. “I’ll … catch up to you later,” he mumbled.

“Anthony,” she said, before he could walk away. “I’m sorry, you caught me off guard. Do you want to come in? For a minute?”

He looked her up and down again with such bare interest that she felt her nipples go harder still. Then he nodded and followed her inside.

She closed the door behind him, but stayed very close to it. “I could make some coffee.”

“No, it’s okay.” He seemed suddenly awkward, uncomfortable. “I just wanted to … make sure you were okay. Got home safe and all.”

“I’m a big girl, Anthony.”

“I know.” He looked her up and down again, then looked away. “Heard you got Angel.”

“With a little help.”

“Good.” There was a long pause. “Well. I’ll let you get back to bed.”

He didn’t move.

Marconi wasn’t looking at her, so Joss took a good long moment to look him over. He wasn’t actually tall; he was just built in a solid, lean way that made him seem taller. He was very well put together. He knew it, of course. The way that jacket stretched just a little over his shoulders. The way those jeans hugged his ass …

“At the hotel the other day,” Joss said bluntly, “why did you turn me down?”

Anthony’s eyes flicked up to meet hers. A little smile played in them, sad and knowing. “I told you. I like you, Carter.”

“So?”

He opened one hand. “You’re beautiful, and smart, and honest, and strong … and very desirable.”

“So naturally you turned me down. Well, thanks for clearing that up.”

He smile reached his mouth, just a tiny curl at the corners. “I’m none of those things, Carter.”

She could have argued he was at least strong and desirable, and she might have thrown in beautiful. She kept her mouth shut and waited.

“I _like_ you, Carter,” he repeated. “But you don’t like me.”

Joss raised one eyebrow. “What?”

“You don’t like me. You know what I am. You know I’m no good. So why would you want a guy like me?”

“I wasn’t looking for love, Marconi. I just wanted to scratch an itch.”

“But you could get any guy in the city to scratch your itch. The only reason you want me …”

“Is because you’re a Descendant.”

He nodded seriously.

“Why wasn’t your name on the list?”

“Raven knew I could take care of myself, once she’d warned me. Besides, I would have been way down the list. We knew you’d catch Angel long before she got to me.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Carter studied him for a long moment. He was more relaxed now that he knew she knew the truth. “How long have you known?”

“About the Blood? A few months. Before that I just thought I was a stud.”

“Hmmm.”

“All those women,” he continued, “the ones I thought wanted to be with me? They did, but it wasn’t me, or even because I was tight with Elias. It was just … biology.” He shrugged. “That didn’t bother me any. Casual piece of the street, everybody gets off, everybody goes home happy, no big deal.”

“And Elias?”

Anthony smiled, without the smirk this time. “Carl knows me, through and through. He loves me anyhow.”

She couldn’t resist smiling back. “I think you’re right about that.”

“Like I told you, we’re not exclusive. He gets some on the side, I get some on the side, it’s all good.”

Carter waited.

“But you,” Marconi finally continued, “you’re different. Like I said, I like you.” 

“You knew I just wanted to get with you because of the Blood. And you didn’t want to take advantage of it. Of me.”

He shrugged.

“That’s almost honorable, Marconi.”

A wry smile twisted at his mouth again. “Hey, even bad guys try to be good sometimes. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Carter promised. “ _Both_ secrets. No one would believe me anyhow.”

“Thanks.”

That was pretty clearly the end of the conversation, but he still didn’t make any move to leave. Carter realized that she already knew what he was waiting for – that she’d known from the minute she saw him at the door. She smoothed one hand over her robe. “So you drove all the way out here and waited until my son left for school just to tell me that?”

This time his smile was as smarmy as she’d ever seen it, but there was also fun in his eyes. “Elias says forewarned is forearmed. Now that you know what you’re getting into and why, you know you can turn it down. But … if you still got that itch …”

Carter smirked back at him. “You think you’re the one to scratch it?”

“I’m pretty sure I have the right tool for the job, yeah.”

It was such a crappy line that Joss laughed out loud. And it was perfect. Cocky. Exactly what she wanted from Anthony Marconi.

She spent a long moment letting him think she was thinking about it. Then she shrugged. “I need a shower first.”

His eyes lit up. “Perfect.”

 ***

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

It was strange, Carter thought as she climbed the stairs again. As a detective, the sound of his boots on the carpet behind her should have filled her with alarm. She knew precisely how dangerous Anthony Marconi was. Yet she’d invited him into her home, into her bed …

… her heart fluttered like a school girl’s …

… the dangerous makes it better, she thought, and that was precisely the idea that got so many women killed in this city …

… she wasn’t going to stop anyhow. She might as well stop worrying about it.

She paused at the top of the stairs and pointed toward her bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

“Thanks.” He went in, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled his boots off.

Carter hesitated again. She was reluctant to leave him alone in her house. Afraid he’d go through her drawers or …

… not that he couldn’t break in and do that any time he wanted to anyhow …

He glanced at her knowingly. “I won’t steal your stuff, Carter.”

… and her weapon was right there beside him in the drawer …

… like he didn’t have one of his own, nestled against the small of his back …

“Stay out of my drawers,” she answered calmly, and went into the bathroom.

She left the door open a crack, just so she could keep an ear on him. She heard the soft creak of leather as he took his jacket off. The click of metal, and then the whisper of a sipper. Belt, jeans.

Carter had felt the outline of what he had inside those jeans. Her body glowed with memory and anticipation, and she wondered what the hell had taken so long.

A quick shower and then it was all hers.

She grabbed a hair tie and pulled her hair back in a quick ponytail, then slipped out of the purple robe and hung it on the door. She started the faucet and let it warm up. While she waited, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Her skin was good, smooth and firm. Her breasts still pert, more so now that her nipples were standing at attention again – still. Her waist tampered nicely, and below …

Well, scars. A few, mostly faded. But Marconi had scars, too. They didn’t matter.

She stepped into the shower and slid the door shut.

Joss let the water pound on her chest for a minute. She looked up into the spray and washed her face with her hands, not letting her hair get too wet. Then she turned and let the heat sluice down her back, easing the tension out of her shoulder. The weariness of being a cop swirled down the drain with the smell of bad coffee and the grungy precinct.

A little puff of cold air from the direction of the door warned her, and Joss smiled, mildly and pleasantly surprised. The shower door slid back and Anthony Marconi, in all his naked glory, stepped into the shower with her.

She was right about the scars, she thought, letting her eyes scan down his muscled chest. More than she would have expected, even for him. She was right about the cock, too. It stood proudly, half-erect, and it was more than big enough to scratch all her itches.

“You’re impatient,” she said.

“Yeah, I am.” He put his hands on her waist and moved up into the shower spray and kissed her gently.

Joss was well past wanting to be kissed gently. But when she surged forward to deepen the kiss, Anthony lifted his face away. “Easy.”

His face, with the water splashing in droplets on it, dripping down over the scar by his eye, was absolutely beautiful. Carter knew it was just the draw of the Old Blood – mostly – but she wanted him, all of him, then and there.

She rolled her hips against his erect cock. “Why?” she teased.

“Because I want it to last.” He lowered his mouth to hers again and kissed her tenderly.

She couldn’t argue with that logic. She arched her back and submitted to his pace.

The kiss went on a very long time. Gentle and probing, tasting, exploring. His hands stayed on her waist, but Carter felt herself growing aroused just from the kiss. Finally Marconi pulled her just a little tighter, so that her breasts were pressed against his chest. His tongue became just a little more demanding, and Joss groaned against him. She shifted her feet and caught his cock between her upper thighs. He was just the right height; when she rocked her hips, her clit brushed over that hard shaft.

“Damn,” he said softly. He lifted his mouth away from hers. Before she could protest, he tightened his hands and firmly turned her around. Then he slid both arms around her waist and pulled her tightly against his chest. His cock slipped between her legs again, and she felt his balls nestle against her ass. She rolled against him again. He tightened his arms, holding her still. “Anthony …” she began.

“Shhh. I got you. Lean back.”

Joss let a little more of her weight settle on his chest. He slid one hand upward and cupped her breast. “Damn, you got nice tits,” he said.

Carter almost laughed again at his crude lines, but he flattened his hand and slid it over the curve and across her already-excited nipple, and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“Been thinking a long time about how nice it would be to hold your tits like this,” he continued, his words hot in her ear, as he hand continued to explore. “About how firm and full they’d be. About how you’d jump when I did this.” He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, not hard, and she did jump. He nipped at her neck, letting her feel the hard edge of his teeth, still not hard. “About how you’d smell, and how you’d taste.” His nimble fingers continued to work her nipple. Joss felt a connection between her breast and her sex that seemed electric. She was already wet and ready for him. And she knew he was just getting started.

She groaned out loud.

“And how you’d sound,” Anthony added warmly.

He released her breast, wrapped that arm back around her waist, and used his other hand to begin working the other one.

Carter couldn’t stop from rocking her hips against him. The feel of his cock sliding past her opening, hard and thick, drove her excitement even higher.

Marconi opened his free hand flat and pressed it flat against her belly, holding her still. “Easy,” he said again.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Joss admitted.

“That’s the plan.” There wasn’t any mockery in his voice now. It was full of lust instead. “You gonna compromise you principles like this, Detective, I am damn sure going to make it worth your while.”

She was going to say something in return, but he suddenly tugged hard on her nipple and bit down hard on her neck and her words dissolved into a small, sharp orgasm.

“There we go,” Anthony murmured. The hand that had been restraining her began to stroke, over her belly, over her thighs. Joss rocked again. His fingertips settled on her right thigh, firm, and she obliged him by moving her leg slightly to the side.

The warm water ran down her body, gently teasing at her sex. For a moment Marconi kept her there, his hand pressed against her inner thigh, holding her open to the gentle spray. Then he moved his fingers, not to her clit but along the crease where her leg met her torso. She groaned, wanting more, and he danced a single fingertip along her center, hardly harder than the shower spray.

Joss put her head back on his shoulder. “Damn it, Anthony …”

“More?” he teased.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Touch me.”

He let his fingertip rest lightly on her clit. “Here?”

“Yes.”

The finger flicked lightly. Joss felt herself coiling toward a bigger orgasm. He moved his finger away, worked his other hand on her breast instead. It was a different stimulation, good but not quite as good. He switched back. Ran his whole hand along her slit, back up over her clit. She arched, pressed against his palm. His hand was callused. Time at the gun range, she realized vaguely, and the notion made her jump again. To be naked in her shower with _this_ man, of all people …

He rubbed her with his flat palm. Carter’s breath went short. She was close. But the stimulation wasn’t quite focused enough, or fast enough, or hard enough. “Please.”

“Tell me,” he repeated. He rubbed with his palm again.

“Fingertips,” she panted.

“Where?”

She was going to kill him, Joss thought in the little corner of her mind still capable of thought. At the very least she was going to torture him until he screamed. Paybacks were a bitch. But at the moment … “Touch my clit,” she managed to say.

He did, immediately, but he circled his fingertip far too lightly, far too slowly. “Faster,” Joss commanded, “and harder.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She came before the second word was out of his mouth. Her body thrashed against him, and he had to release her breast to keep her on her feet. But he didn’t stop.

As that climax began to fade, she said, “Inside.”

Marconi made an approving noise. “You want my fingers inside you?”

“Yes.” Carter felt completely depraved, wanton. Perfect.

He slipped one finger into her opening without hesitation. She felt herself clench on him, smooth and slick. “Another,” she demanded.

He slipped his finger out, sliding it over her clit, and reinserted two fingers. She felt full, but not uncomfortable. Her muscles continued to clench at him, aftershocks of the previous orgasm. “Yes.”

Marconi began to thrust slowly. His thumb rested on her clit now, rubbing with every stroke. Carter rolled her hips into his hand now. She felt his cock rub against her inner thigh. It was hotter than the shower water, hard and tantalizing. It was going to be fantastic, deep inside her. But for now …

“One more?” Anthony asked.

“Yessssss.”

He withdrew his fingers, thrust into her with three, and she came again, hard and long. Her whole body seemed to clench around him this time, trying to milk those fingers. Trying to milk the pleasure. But there was no need; he didn’t stop. He thrust into her, drawing out her crest until her vision went dark at the edges. Beyond the peak was the release she’d waited for all day and all night.

When the wave finally past, she made a noise of protest and he stopped moving. His hands stayed where they were. Joss moved her feet closer together, trapping his cock again.

“Now what?” he asked, and she was pleased to note that his voice cracked a little.

“Now,” Carter answered, “put your hands behind your head.”

Marconi chuckled uneasily. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said. “Assume the position.”

He removed his fingers slowly, first from her crease and then from her breast. It was a little shock when the last contact finally broke. But Carter didn’t let the separation last long. She turned her back to the shower spray and put her hands flat on Anthony’s chest.

He looked at her, his eyes dark and wary, but he kept his fingers laced obediently behind his head. Joss put one hand on his elbow and traced it up the bottom side of his arm and across his armpit. There was a dark tangle of hair there, and beneath a tough crease that was some kind of hidden scar. She wanted to explore it, but Marconi flinched away. “Ticklish?” Carter asked.

“Maybe a little.”

She let her hand continue down his side. He continued to flinch, but less; he was fighting to control it. He was very well-muscled. At his waist, Joss trailed her fingers across to his navel. Then she turned her hand over and dragged her fingernails up and across his nipple. Anthony gasped, but kept his hands locked. “Good boy,” she murmured.

She leaned and caught his taut nipple between her lips. She sucked it harder, then held it between her teeth and lapped at it with her tongue.

She felt his cock jump between them. Marconi groaned deeply.

Joss released her bite and leaned in. “Kiss me,” she said, “slow.”

Anthony kissed her. He kept his hands behind his head, moved his tongue sweetly, enticingly, against hers. She could feel the urgency building in him now. She ran her hands down his arms and torso again, without breaking the kiss. She stroked his upper thighs, which were tight with tension. Reached around to stroke his perfect ass. Stroked his defined abs and the low V below.

“Please,” Anthony said into her mouth.

“Keep kissing,” Joss answered. “I like how you kiss.”

He did as he was told.

Carter wrapped her hand around the shaft his cock.

He froze, then focused on the kiss again, leaning in to kiss her harder, trying to seduce her with his tongue. But Joss was focused on the feel of that cock. The heat of it, the weight. The firmness and the fullness. She ran her hand up and caught pre-cum on her palm, then used it to slick the shaft as she gripped again. She worked it, but not fast or hard.

Against her mouth, Anthony said, “Uh. Uh-uh-uh.”

“Paybacks are a bitch,” Carter said. She wrapped her other hand over his balls. They were full and heavy, and from the way he jumped, sensitive.

Marconi panted, thrust against her hands. He unclenched his fingers, started to reach for her.

“No,” Joss said. “Keep them up.”

He groaned again, but locked his fingers behind his neck again. His eyes opened, desperate now. “Please. Please.”

“I got you,” Joss promised him. She stroked his cock gently, kneaded his balls. “I got you. Turn around here.”

“Huh?”

She steered him gently around, sliding past him in the shower so his back was to the spray. “Keep your hands there,” she instructed.

His eyes were frantic with desire, but his nodded his agreement.

This time as Carter ran her hands down his torso, she dropped to her knees in front of him.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” Marconi said eagerly.

Joss grinned. She didn’t hurry. His cock was right here, hard and desperate, but she ignored it for the moment. Instead she put her hands on his thighs. They were firmly muscled, covered lightly with fine black hair. There was a long curving scar on his left leg, from the inside of his thigh to the top of his knee. It was very old, perhaps as old as the scar on his face, and thick, is if it had not been stitched, not healed well.

She leaned and pressed her lips to it, traced little kissed up the length of in. Anthony’s cock brushed against her cheek. He made a soft keening noise.

Joss nipped at the soft flesh, felt the cock jump in response. She did it again, then moved to the other leg and nipped and kissed her way along his upper thigh. Marconi stood still, but he continued to make soft noises, barely louder than the shower spray.

The sounds he made ran straight to Carter’s sex. Despite the orgasms she’s already had, she wanted more. She wanted this ‘tool’, as he so elegantly put it, deep inside her. Wanted him on top of her. Wanted …

But Anthony wanted to take it slow, and she could go along with that. He was right. If she was going to do this thing that part of her knew was so wrong, she might as well make the most of it.

She put her hands on his thighs, held him firmly, and leaned to suck one of his balls into her mouth.

Marconi yelped. From the corner of her eye Joss saw his hands come forward. She tightened her hands, letting her nails dig in a little, and he obediently put them behind his head again.

She grinned, released his testicle and then sucked in the other. Then she stroked her tongue up the shaft of his cock. It bobbed in response, and pre-cum oozed from the tip and dripped away with the shower spray.

Marconi groaned his appreciation again. “Joss …”

“I got you,” she repeated. She brought one hand up to cup and knead his balls. “I got you.”

She licked over the crown, tasting him. The pre-cum continued, heavier, and she lapped it away. Finally she took his entire cock deep into her mouth. She didn’t linger, but drew off at once, licking all the way, working him with her tongue and with her hands before taking him in again.

Anthony’s thighs, his whole body, went tense. Carter could tell he was fighting to keep his hands up, fighting for control. She didn’t intend to let him keep it. She worked his cock hard and fast, right until she felt him coil toward climax. Then she slowed.

“Jossssssss …” Marconi wailed, desire and warning in one word.

She could stop now, drag him into bedroom and climb aboard – or she could make a morning of it.

“Come on,” she said, and took his cock deep into her mouth again.

He still tried to hold back, still tried to keep control – until the fourth time she thrust her mouth against him and sucked, hard, and then he came, thrusting back, spurting. She sucked until he shuddered.

Then she released his cock, moved her mouth to the scar on his thigh, and sucked hard enough to leave a bruise. Something for Elias, she thought. _Carter was here_.

She grinned again, then held her arms up. “Help me up.”

Marconi immediately reached down, grabbed her elbows, and pulled her to her feet. He leaned heavily against her. “Damn, Joss …”

“Paybacks,” she answered. She opened her mouth and got a mouthful of shower water over his shoulder, then turned and spit it out. “Rinse,” she ordered.

They both rinsed off, taking turns under the shower spray. Anthony was uncharacteristically silent. _Finally found a way to shut him up_ , Joss thought smugly. She shut off the faucet, rolled back the door, and stepped out.

There was not really enough room in the bathroom for both of them to dry off. Joss grabbed a clean towel out of the cupboard and handed it to Marconi, then took one of her own and moved to the bedroom.

She took her hair down and buffed it roughly with the towel; it was surprisingly only a little damp. Then she dried off her body quickly.

Marconi’s clothes were laid very neatly over the chair by her dressing table. His boots were neatly lined up beneath it. His leather jacket was folded on the seat, and his gun rested on top of it. It was surprisingly orderly. Unexpected.

Joss heard his footsteps and turned. Marconi stopped in the doorway. He had his towel wrapped around his waist; his hair was freshly-tousled and damp. She expected his cocky grin, but instead he looked serious, a little uncertain. “Do you want me to go now?”

Some part of Carter’s brain hesitated. Because if she sent him away now she could still say … what? That they hadn’t actually had sex? It was a technicality. “No,” she answered immediately. “Unless you want to.”

The familiar twinkle returned to his eyes. “I got nowhere I need to be.”

“You have a condom?” Carter kept a small stash of them in the bathroom, mostly for her son’s benefit – he took them, she replaced them, no questions asked, because she much preferred that he had them than that he didn’t – but she wasn’t precisely sure of their status at the moment.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I’d like you to stay and fuck me.” She was startled by the frankness of her own words, but she was pretty sure it didn’t show.

Marconi’s eyes got just a little wider. “I can do that.  Might take a minute or two.” He glanced down at his towel.

“I got nowhere I need to be either,” Joss said. “You want that coffee now?”

“Sure.”

“How do you take it?” She moved past him to the bedroom door.

“Black’s fine.”

Carter looked over her shoulder at him. “Damn right it is. But how do you take your coffee?”

Marconi laughed out loud.

“I’ll be right back,” she promised.

He was still chuckling as she walked down the stairs.

 ***

**  
**

****


	7. Chapter 7

Harold Finch had given her a fancy Keurig single-cup brewer for Christmas, along with a ridiculous assortment of single-cup coffees and teas. Carter ignored all of the flavored and decaf blends and reached for two little pods for extra-dark. She got two mugs and started the first one brewing. Then she had to adjust her towel. She would have rather been naked, but she wasn’t sure which of her neighbors might be around, maybe glancing through their curtains at her.

Her whole body tingled, both with satisfaction and anticipation. There was something doubly delicious about having illicit sex at this hour, while respectable people were hurrying off to work and school.

Finch, she thought idly. She was almost completely certain he and Reese were lovers. But it didn’t surprise her that John had had sex with Raven. She’d figured he was pretty much at the middle of the bisexual spectrum. But even if he hadn’t been – she was mostly hetero, and she would have jumped Raven in a hot second.

She’d tried, actually.

Carter grinned to herself and rubbed her hands together, remembering hanging on that fence in Elias’ apartment. She was pretty certain that someday she would call that phone number. Some day when Taylor was going to be gone for the whole weekend … 

The first cup finished and she waited for thirty seconds while the brewer reheated.

So John and Raven. And Finch, too? Fusco thought so. It seemed possible. Likely, even. At the same time? More than possible.

_I would not mind being the meat in that particular man sandwich_ , she thought. But it would take some concentration. Time-management skills, as it were.

Raven would know how to handle two men. Or three, or a dozen.

“Damn, Joss,” she said to herself. Something about meeting Raven had thrown open all the doors in her head. She’d been pretty open-minded before, but now everything seemed not only acceptable but utterly desirable. Anything two or more consenting adults wanted to do, it was all good.

She brewed the second cup of coffee, adjusted her towel once more, and headed back upstairs to be a consenting adult with Anthony Marconi.

 ***

Anthony has turned down her bed, folded the comforter and the top sheet neatly to the footboard. She hadn’t expected him to be such a tidy man. He still has his towel wrapped around his waist, and he is sitting up on the far side of the bed, with his back against the headboard.

The condom was on the bedside table beside him, the outer pack already torn open.

The man was nothing if not efficient.

Joss handed him his coffee, then climbed in and sat beside him. They both sipped quietly for a moment. He had very long toes, she noted. Another long scar that started at the top of his foot and curved up around his ankle.

She wanted to ask who had cut him so often, but she didn’t think he’d answer. They weren’t like that. They never would be.

“It’s good,” Anthony said quietly, and it took her a minute to realize he was talking about the coffee.

“Thanks.”

“No second thoughts yet?”

Even now he was giving her an out. _There is some part of this man_ , Joss thought, _that is fundamentally decent. It’s buried deep deep down, but it’s there._ “Not yet,” she said. “You?”

He smirked. “Got a little cramp in my right calf, but other than that, no.”

“Awww, poor baby.” Joss twisted around to put her cup on the bedside table, then moved to sit facing him, next to his leg. She picked up his foot, propped it against her shoulder, and kneaded his calf.

“Ah – ah!” Anthony gasped, half in pain, and then, “ahhhhhhhh, there.”

She kept working until she felt the cramp unknot. Marconi watched her, his eyes dark and serious again. Then he smiled, to himself. “What?” Joss asked.

“Just thinking,” he answered. “About you in your tailored pantsuits, your blouse all buttoned up, always in charge and respectable.”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“If those cops could see you now, wearing nothing but a towel and a smile.”

Joss scraped her fingernail lightly over the back of his knee. Marconi actually flailed, laughing while he twisted away from her touch. “If all those tough guys could see you now,” she teased.

“That’s cheating,” he protested. He managed to put his coffee cup down without spilling too much of it.

“I can’t believe you’re that ticklish.”

Marconi grinned crookedly. “First time I saw you, all buttoned up like that, I knew you’d be a wild one in the sack.”

“Did you now?”

“And I knew I was just the guy to get them buttons undone.”

Carter shook her head. “You know, this being a Descendant thing has really hurt you. You’ve got the worst lines I’ve ever heard. No game at all.”

“Never needed game,” he allowed. “I just crook my little finger and the babes come crawling to me.”

“Uh-huh. Right.”

He crooked his finger at her. “C’mere, babe.”

Joss laughed and remained by his feet. “No.”

“You know you want to.” He turned up his smile a notch, narrowed his eyes more intently.

She felt the pull of the attraction like a physical thing. The Blood, she recognized, and she would never not know it again. Knowing helped her resist. “Nope.”

Anthony’s voice dropped into a smoky register. “I’ll make it worth your while, Joss,” he drawled.

It took all her willpower to stay where she was. “You promise?”

“Oh, I _promise_.”

Joss stayed put for a long moment – long enough to prove to them both that she _could_ stay put. Then, of her own will, she grinned and moved, crawled up and sat straddling his outstretched thighs. “You better make this good, sonny.”

“Oh, darlin’, you have no idea.” He put both his hands behind her neck and pulled her forward into a kiss.

Joss expected him to be slow and gentle, as he’d been in the shower. But Marconi was in another gear now. He kissed her fiercely, almost brutally. His tongue plundered her mouth forcefully. She knew both their lips were bruising. She didn’t care. She shoved back against him, kissed him just as savagely.

“Yes!” he said against her mouth. His hands moved down her back, stripped her towel away. Then they were on her ass, his bruising grip kneading her cheeks, lifting her. Joss moved up to her knees. Marconi tore his mouth away from hers. As she rose, he placed his mouth wide over her breast, nipple and all, and sucked, hard. Joss squealed in surprise more than pain. His tongue lashed over her nipple, teasing ferociously. She tried to pull away and his teeth dug in warningly. She arched toward him instead and he stayed with her, sucking and tonguing that tender portion of aroused skin until she cried out in protest.

Anthony lifted his face, grinned at her wolfishly, and fell to prey on the other breast.

Joss braced herself for a second erotic assault. But this time Marconi changed his approach. He sucked her breast in hard again, then brushed her nipple very lightly with just the tip of his tongue. Tapping, curling and caressing. As gentle as he had been brutal before.

The contrast made her cry out again.

As he continued with painful gentleness, his firm hands continued to lift and caress her ass. As the stimulation from her breasts made her sharply aroused, Joss couldn’t help thrusting her hips forward. His hands stayed with her, supporting, urging.

Then one hand dropped down and he ran the edge of his hand up along her crease. Joss was already very wet; he drew the moisture all the way up between her ass cheeks. Then he moved downward again, turned his hand over and flicked her clit with his fingertip while his palm rubbed her opening.

Joss laced her fingers through his hair and pulled, hard, until he released her breast and turned his face up again. Then she kissed him. She wanted his tongue in her mouth while his fingers were deep inside her. She wanted his cock. She wanted … “Everything,” she groaned into his mouth.

“You got it,” he promised.

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her, then lowered her onto her back on the bed beside him. Joss reached for him, pulling him over on top of her, wanting him to mount her, to fuck her then and there. But he resisted, caught her hands and held her wrists together over her head.

Then he went still, holding her down, just looking at her.

Carter tried not to beg – for a split instant. “Please,” she said.

“Just give me a minute,” Anthony answered. His voice was as full of need as her own. “Just let me look at you for one minute. You are so goddamn beautiful, Joss Carter. I don’t think you have any idea how beautiful you are right now.”

“I want you,” she said. “I want _you_ , Anthony.”

He grinned crookedly. “You have me. All of me.”

He leaned down and kissed her again. Then he nipped his way down her throat. He released her hands suddenly and kept moving away, his hands tracing down her body. Joss coiled, half-fearing another assault on her already-tender breasts, but he was gentle, kissing and caressing lightly and briefly, then planting fluttering little kisses down her belly. His tongue danced around the circle of her navel and then he was moving downward again.

His breath ghosted over her sex. Carter dug her fingers into his hair again. “Anthony, don’t …”

“Shhh,” he answered. His strong hands to pull her legs a little further apart, then adjusted his weight so his chest pinned her thighs down. He used his thumb and forefinger to hold her slit open, exposing her clit unprotected to his mouth. But he stayed still again, just breathing, blowing softly. Joss coiled in anticipation. “So beautiful,” he said again.

He laid his tongue flat against her opened and dragged it up with agonizing slowness until he reached her clit. Joss thrust her hips upward, frantic for more contact. Anthony pushed her legs down. But he moved is tongue faster and harder, lapping her, twirling. He wasn’t teasing now. He was as intent as she was on her climax.

He lowered his whole mouth and sucked her clit between his teeth, and she came hard and long. Anthony stayed right there, licking gently though it, and through the small after-waves.

“Please,” Joss said, when she could speak again. She tugged at his hair lightly.

“What?”

“Please fuck me now.”

He made a little noise, and then he was licking her clit again, as he eased three fingers deep into her cunt.

Joss screamed between her teeth, part frustration, part bliss, and came again, even harder. He pumped his fingers, licking in time with the motion, dragging the orgasm on and on until she thought she was going to faint again. “Stop,” she moaned, “stop.”

Anthony stopped, withdrew his fingers slowly, and looked up at her. “You are fucking delicious, Joss.” He licked his fingers.

“Get up here,” she ordered.

He slid up beside her again. Joss wasn’t surprised that he’d lost his towel somewhere along the line. She sat up and shoved him roughly over on his back. His cock bobbed, fully erect. She wrapped her hand around the shaft. “This, Anthony. When I say I want you to fuck me, _this_ is what I want.”

He laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

She worked the shaft slowly, watching pre-cum bubble up at the tip. “If you weren’t so good with your other appendages, I might be rather angry at you.” She gestured and he reached over for the condom.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, still grinning.

“Ma’am.” Joss shook her head and flicked the condom package fully open with one hand. “Do you call Elias ‘sir’ when you’re in bed with him?”

“No.” He watched intently as she rolled the condom down over his cock, a great deal more slowly than she needed to. “I call him ‘boss’.”

Joss laughed. “Of course you do.” She wrapped her hand tightly around his cock again. “I don’t know. Not sure I’m still in the mood, Anthony.”

The mobster whimpered, very softly. “Please.”

“What was that?”

“Please, Joss.”

She stroked him thoughtfully. “Please what?”

“Please let me fuck you, Joss.”

Carter leaned and kissed him gently. “Since you asked so nicely.” She turned and straddled him, then lowered herself slowly, firmly onto his cock.

He fit like a key in a lock. His cock stretched her a little, filled her. He felt perfect inside her. It was exactly what she’d waited for. Exactly what she’d craved. Exactly the tool to scratch her itch, as promised. Joss closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.

“Joss.”

She opened her eyes and peered down at Marconi. He gazed up at her, his pupils wide, his smile almost as satisfied as hers. “Please,” he said.

“Ahhh.” Joss clenched her inside muscles, kneading his cock trapped within her.

Anthony took a sharp breath.

She did it again, and this time he moaned. “Please, Joss.”

His hands were on her hips. He urged her gently upward and she moved with him, up and then down and then up again. She squeezed every time he thrust, and she felt his cock twitch in anticipation. “Faster,” he said.

Carter gave him a little smirk of her own. “Oh, so _now_ you want to fuck properly, is that it?”

He didn’t even try to resist. “Yes. Please, God, yes.”

Joss lowered herself onto him, so their chests touched and she could kiss his frantic mouth. “Good,” she answered. “Me, too.”

She rolled them over. Anthony adjusted on top of her, got his knees set, and thrust, hard. She brought her hips up to meet him. It took them a couple warm-up thrusts to get it, and then they fell into a rhythm. They both wanted to go slow, they managed slow for about ten thrusts, and then neither of them could bear it. Carter dragged her nails over his back, urging him faster, and Marconi complied. She wrapped her legs around him, locked her ankles across his back, squeezed with her thighs and her arms and her sex.

She wanted him hard and fast and deep, and that was precisely how he took her.

Joss felt another climax welling up deep inside her. She wanted it. Yanked Anthony against her, into her. Hard hard _hard_ , wanted it, and then it was there and she was falling over the edge, diving over, “Now,” she said, and she was coming and coming and coming.   

Marconi shouted and came one thrust behind her.

And the next, and the next, and the next.

He collapsed onto her, finally still, and Joss held him tight, welcoming his weight, reveling in the feel of his cock still twitching inside her.

When she could speak, the only word she could find was, “Perfect.”

Marconi chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

Eventually she pushed him over on his back. He rolled to his side and removed the condom, then flopped back and they lay there, side by side, hands touching, for a long time.

Joss felt herself drifting toward sleep.

She shouldn’t. She should stay awake, be a good hostess … she chuckled at the notion, and then she was out.

When she woke, it was because Marconi was pulling the sheet and comforter up over her. He was already dressed, including the black jacket. He sat on the edge of the bed to pull his boots on. She reached out and grasped a handful of the leather. It was butter-soft, exactly as she expected.

Marconi looked over his shoulder. “Am I free to go, Detective?”

“For now,” she answered sleepily. “But don’t leave town. I may have more … itches for you later.”

He grinned. “I did warn you, I’m kind of addictive.”

“You’re kind of a braggart.”

“It’s only bragging if you can’t follow through.”

“Hmmmm.” She wanted to take him down a notch, but she was too damn content. “Thank you,” she said simply.

“For what?”

“The great sex,” she admitted.

“It _was_ great, wasn’t it?”

“You arrogant bastard.”

“It was great for me, too.”

“Well, thanks for that.” She sat up a little. “And for not taking advantage. Until I asked you to.”

His mouth twisted a little. “Yeah, decency. Our secret, right?”

“My lips are sealed.”

Marconi started to make some smart-ass remark. Carter threw an elbow into his ribs. “You know where to find me,” he said instead as he stood up.

“Sure Elias won’t mind?”

“Oh, my boss is very committed to maintaining friendly relationships with the local police department.”

“Friendly relationships. Is that what this is?”

“If you want it to be.”

Carter snuggled deeper under the comforter. “I’ll let you know.”

Marconi gave her his side-ways, smirky grin. “I can let myself out.”

“M’kay. Don’t steal anything.”

“Only a kiss,” he promised. He leaned and kissed her lips lightly.

Joss groaned. “Lines like that, if you weren’t a Descendant you’d never get laid at all.”

“I know,” Anthony admitted. He kissed her one more time, then strode out of the room.

“Nice ass you got there,” Carter muttered after him.

She heard him chuckle on the stairs, but he didn’t answer. She listened as he left, as the door locked behind him. The house went silent.

Carter stretched her arms over her head, and felt at least six muscles twinge. She was going to be sore as hell in a few hours. She didn’t care. Totally worth it. She folded her arms and stared at the ceiling. A hot shower right now would help with that. And with the fact that she reeked of sex.

She was also still hungry.

But none of it really tempted her to get out of bed. She was completely content. Satisfied. Sated.

And tired.

It wasn’t smart, banging a man she knew was a ruthless criminal. And a crime boss’ first lieutenant. And his lover.

Not smart banging a man who could exert the kind of attraction Anthony Marconi could, either. But then, Elias was right, forewarned was forearmed. She could resist him now. If she wanted to.

Which she didn’t, at the moment.

It had been a long time since she’d had sex, and an even longer time since she’d had really exceptional sex. Now she had Marconi on speed dial. And Raven’s number. And she was willing to bet she could hit up Reese, or Finch, or both.

She suddenly had a lot of sexual options.

She had the feeling she was going to want use one of them, sometime soon.

But now she just wanted to sleep.

As long as she showered before Taylor got home from school, she thought contentedly.

And then, finally, she slept.

 ***


End file.
